


Heretic

by neichan



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adult Content, Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-03
Updated: 2006-03-08
Packaged: 2019-02-05 16:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 32,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12798249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neichan/pseuds/neichan
Summary: An introduction to Smamacasca.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Haven, the archivist: This story was originally archived at [Fandom Haven Story Archive (FHSA)](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Haven_Story_Archive), was scheduled to shut down at the end of 2016. To preserve the archive, I began working with the OTW to transfer the stories to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. If you are this creator and the work hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Fandom Haven Story Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/fhsa/profile).

Warnings: Slash, m/m. Vampires. Lycanthropes, Goblins, ffey, an Alternate History fic of the Anita Blake genre, but all mine, all original. There will be no boundaries. I will touch on everything that tickles my fancy. There will be incest. There will be blood. There will be non-con. There will be struggle. Some will die. All if it will be essential to the plot and not gratuitous. There will be times to laugh and times to cry.

 

******

 

I was six years old before I knew something was different about me. 

 

The other children at the ffey court were slender reeds, with delicate limbs and often walked with the affectionate touch of mother, nurse or father guiding them along the path. I was squarer, plumper, sturdier, with stripes of color, faint green, bronze, gold, cream webbing across my ivory skin, rather that the glowing one color of the other ffey children around me. I was taller than the other boys, and my hair was thicker, heavier, and curly, rather than a sleek shining wave.

 

It was then, when I was six, I noticed they smelled differently, too. They smelled dry, less earthy, less rich. Many wore scents, perfumes that were too strong, too sharp in my nose, and I would sneeze when they got close. 

 

I walked alone or with my nurse who didn't touch me often. It was not until much later that I realized she was afraid of me, even when I was still small she was afraid. I saw the way the other kids were touched. I looked around me for my mother or father and was surprised to note I had none to claim me.

 

I slept in a small room, with my nurse, but she did not like to hug me like I saw other children hugged. She did not look at me with wonder on her face, or love. She did not carry, not even when I had been very young. She taught me quickly tasks like brushing my hair, and even more importantly, she taught me to stay away form the shining adults of the ffey court and their shining children.

 

I remember her only as "nurse". I don't recall ever hearing her name, or her rank. A slim, dark ffey woman, with nut brown skin, a reserved manner. She never yelled, she calmly corrected me and kept me out of trouble, most of the time. When I did get into trouble, it was not because of things she told me to do, rather the opposite. I got into trouble by not obeying her dictates.

 

She washed me, and my things, did her duty. Kept our small quarters tidy. And made sure I was fed and clothed. She saw that I went to the tutors at night, when the other children were asleep, listened to their ideas and arguments while they ate and drank their evening meal. They fed me from their own platters of food and I think some found me fascinating. My differences at least worthy of study and contemplation.

 

The teachers gradually included me in their small circle of intellectuals. I talked and learned from them in the informal setting, things not taught other children. Hidden by the lateness of the hour, they would teach me. Night was the time I was most awake. Night and early morning. By noon I was always sleepy and wanted to take my naps as the ffey court was just beginning to bustle with activity.

 

Nurse walked with me, but she did not hold my hand. I wondered what it was like, holding hands.

 

The tutors made sure I learned everything they could stuff into me. I gave them an excuse to stretch their wings, because no one gave the teachers a list of things I was to be taught. I was not being groomed for greatness or any position in particular. I was being educated simply because the nobles were embarrassed not to educate me. I think they would have preferred I run wild and away from their perfect, untainted court. But, even the teachers, who I think liked me, for I was a child with a quick and inventive mind, didn't touch me, except accidentally. I learned not to desire touch so much, burying the need, the skin hunger, deep, telling myself it was not necessary after all.

 

The only one who touched me willingly and with joy was my cousin Finn. He had to sneak out to meet me, so we could play, investigate and prowl the ffey court's hidden ways. We plotted and planned ways for him to outwit his succession of nurses. And about one or two times per ten-day he was able to do it. We would spend the entire day hiding from those who searched for him. He was in line for the throne, though distantly, and valued for it, so there were always many searchers. We watched them search from our hiding places and laughed. One day they changed his handlers from nurses to wizards, and I knew he wouldn't be getting away so easily any more. I pretended my heart was not aching, That I did not need him. That I would not miss him.

 

At the age of twelve I had had enough of the ffey court. I found my cousin Hana, much older than I and a royal diplomat. I told him I was moving on to the Goblin court. After all I was half goblin. Perhaps I would find more welcome there.

 

Hana was kind to me on the rare instances he was not out on the King's business. But he was not much at ease with children. Still he did embrace me and kiss my cheek before I left. His dark eyes might have been sad.

 

Go I did, carrying my meager possessions. The ffey nurse wouldn't accompany me. She feared to live among goblins, and she feared me, I think, though I had never hurt her.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

Arriving at the goblin court alone, I introduced myself to the queen of the goblins. No one came forward to introduce me, so the job fell to me if I wanted it done at all. I pushed forward through the crowd in the audience room, and no one stopped me. I felt hands on my arms, but they slipped off without even slowing me. I learned later that the magic in the room decided who could see and speak with the queen. The room wanted me to meet her, the goblin attendants couldn't stop me.

 

She smiled at me after recovering from the shock of seeing me alone standing in front of her, with no one else to attend me. In vain she looked for my servants, asked after them. I brought none, I told her. And none wanted to come from ffey to this ghodless place. My words were not diplomatic, but I was a child and blunt.

 

The ffey called the goblin court ghodless and I looked around me in great curiosity, seeking evidence of the ghodlessness. It was rougher, wilder, less refined. But it looked no more ghodless than the ffey court.

 

Here everything, all the buildings, roads, fences, were made of stone and mud brick and thatch. Natural things, the edges of all the buildings rounded, none sharp or squared, no sharp points anywhere. And all of it looked thousands of years old. A few things looked old at the ffey court. But most was new, the old torn down and replaced as tastes changed. Nothing was more than a few hundred years old there. Here, the ancient flavor permeated everything. Goblins worshiped the past, revered it. And that at least I liked. The Earth and I were friends. History, the past, was my love.

 

There was more color here in the goblin's stronghold. Swirling earth tones, brazen reds, bright yellows, metallic golds and silvers, bronze, blues and jeweled greens. Far less in the way of clothing being worn, which seemed sensible as the semi-tropical heat made sweat run down my back between my shoulder blades.

 

Slowly it dawned on me that some of my instinctual dislike of the smothering robes of ffey was attributable to my mixed heritage. Here women and men walked with wildly patterned sarongs tied with negligent style around hips or waist, chests and breasts mostly or completely uncovered. A few might have cloth knotted at throat or over one shoulder. But no one wore the floor to neck to wrist robes I was used to seeing on the ffey. Clothing was a decoration here, in the court of the ffey it was a shield.

 

Here they stared at me almost obsessively curious, while at the ffey court they tried to forget I was there. I was still new to them after all.

 

The queen of the goblins appointed me an assistant to supervise my learning of the customs of the court. The assistant was taller than I, and slimmer, a good deal older and reasonably polite. But she wasn't comfortable with me. And I began to ignore her once it became clear to me she despised my mixed ffey blood, and could not bring herself to touch me. I caught her staring at my mouth, a look of horror on her face one day. Very close to terror, the same as my old nurse. I asked her what was the matter and she refused to answer, flushing even redder than her marbled skin already was, and turning away from me. I had no recourse but to ask the queen, who would tell me outright and true. I remembered to ask the day I saw another goblin, this one male, staring at my mouth as if he couldn't believe his eyes.

 

Perhaps you think it should be obvious to me, but it wasn't. I never noticed that I was the only boy with fangs. I sat puzzled and unsure what to do next after the queen told me in her frank manner. She watched me turn the answer over and over in my mind. I asked her why I, a child, already had fangs. She said that she did not know. That is was the chance of my birth that gave them to me.

 

My father had been a large Kel-goblin, well and truly fanged, a fierce fighter. But my mother was a delicate ffey, with small, blunt white teeth. Definitely no fangs in her beautiful mouth, though I did have relatives with fangs. Small ones. Far smaller than mine even before I was full grown.

 

I observed my reflection in the mirror for a time after that, but to me they simply looked normal, my fangs fit perfectly well in my mouth and I liked them. So....I had them years before I should have. I wasn't sure why it was a big deal. And I certainly couldn't do anything to change it. I had never seen myself without fangs. They made me look dangerous when I bared them and hissed, and I liked that. What kid wouldn't?

 

The ffey court taught me how to hide, how not to be seen. The goblin court taught me how to be angry, and how to fight back. I was a good learner, I always had been. I watched and I waited and I discovered the vulnerabilities of the people around me. I never associated with the lords and ladies formally, but I listened to all they said in my presence. I learned as I wandered in and out of the rooms. None could keep me out as the rooms themselves welcomed me. The nobles pretended to ignore me, eventually stopped noticing me around, except when I caught them staring at me. They usually looked away quickly after that.

 

And so I lived, once more in the background of a royal court, and I grew, slowly, toward adulthood.


	2. Part 2

It was a profound shock to me when I learned who I was.

 

I was thirteen years old. I overheard one noble talking about the horrific cousin of the queen. I listened with rapt horror from my place behind the screen, shuddering at the description of the person in question.

 

Then he said my name. Smamacasca. I was the royal horror. Child terror of the goblin court. I squelched down the hurt, the outrage, and I listened. Again I learned. I had not known I was royal kin here.

 

Gradually, with the aid of much eavesdropping, I learned I could claim a royal's entitlement to adjuncts. And that was the greatest bit of knowledge. I spent a lot of time after over hearing that conversation finding out how to do it right. How to get the most from the entitlement I could.

 

I was both ffey and goblin. A repugnant mix. I was half outcast from both pureblood societies. Yet useful to each at certain times, for certain things. Even the outcast have their uses. And I had more uses than most. I had one, very special talent. Rare and much in demand.

 

I understood the culture and customs of both courts. I embraced the parts I liked, and defiantly shunned the parts of each I disliked. That meant for the most part, since reaching early adulthood when I could take adjuncts, what human kind calls adolescence, I lived a life separate, away from the courts. I had few people who took the time or care to correct me and so I set my own rules and limits.

 

I was lonely before I had my adjuncts. And that drove me to take chances. To stubborn insistence.

 

Being mixed blood was bad enough, but I was also the product of an affair between two royals. Living proof that a royal ffey lay down for a royal goblin, mated, in a joining of flesh that was abhorrent, against all teachings. And if logic were taken further, the two mated often in order to produce an offspring. All the old, long-lived races had such low fertility, once really wasn't enough. It was unheard of for a single mating to cause a pregnancy. So the implication was of a prolonged and passionate, distasteful affair.

 

Cousin to both the king of ffey and the queen of goblins, I was a problem, an embarrassment. Even so they never hesitated to use me when they needed me. If I had not been royal, it is quite possible I would not have lived beyond the hour of my birth. My mother might well have left me out in the woods, there to die of exposure. Her family probably tried to find an excuse to do so. But a royal birth is well attended, there are too many witnesses, and not all of them would willingly say a child was stillborn, not even one as cursed as I, when in fact I was very much alive. And just as clearly not pure ffey.

 

By the polite society I was called "water blood". meaning my blood was diluted, not good enough to pass on, or to claim outright inheritance. Nor many rights within both of my families. Among the less polite I was called "foul blood" with the implication that my blood sullied any other, clouding it's purity, carried a taint that could not be cleared or bred out.

 

I was never talked of as a potential partner or mate. I would not cement treaties nor the like by a well placed marriage. No one came forward, not even secretly, with an offer of an alliance or even a brief affair. Things that would have happened if I was pure goblin or pure ffey, because there is magic in being a first lover. A benefit for both parties. I was that far out of favor, that frightening to the pureblooded. And I had none of the tragic beauty of doomed heroes in popular tales, so I inspired no great lust that could not be overcome with the horror of my person.

 

Among the goblins and the ffey, marriage and bonding was gender neutral. Some married for reproductive reasons, some for family alliances, others for treaties and agreement, some for friendship. The only marriage that had to include a fertile male and a fertile female was one where the purpose was to join bloodlines with children in common. But I knew even as a youth, that no woman would lie down with me and chance carrying a mixed breed child.

 

There were those who married best friends and contracted out for mothers or fathers to their children, if any were desired. And of course there were those who married, but also had bonds, patrons or adjuncts. Among the ffey especially, a patron or adjunct might be married to someone outside of their bond match. Among the goblins that did not happen as often. The goblin queen had both adjuncts and a husband, and a very few of the noble court had similar arrangements. More the exception than the rule.

 

I had not believed I would have either. Then it came to my attention that I was entitled to adjuncts, that the ffey and goblin's law promised me the right. That I could take lifelong companions if I wanted them, regardless of my unsuitability to become a marriage partner. I had absolutely no idea how one chose adjuncts. It was not part of my training as I grew. If I had been an accepted member of the royal line, an aunt or and uncle would have explained the process.

 

Instead, I discovered the way of it by accident. I could put down names and submit them. I could put down the name of any free goblin suitable for adjunct status, which meant any who filed with the court desiring such a match. Any Kel, for those were the ones I was interested in, would have the right of acceptance or refusal after I chose them. I schemed and plotted, and I learned what I had to do.

 

I thought long and hard on whether I should include the names of Kel of both genders. I wished I had a hope of laying with them if I chose to. But I knew in my heart of hearts, if I included women in my choice of adjuncts, they would refuse me out of hand. My stigma was that great. So I looked to the larger, more powerful males, turning my longing eyes away from what I could not have.

 

I lingered at the goblin court. I knew I wanted the superb Kel males from the goblin court, not the smaller, more sophisticated, more androgynous males of the ffey court. Males that would remind me of the feminine I was forbidden to have. I also didn't want the smaller goblins, the hob or the creche-goblins.

 

I wanted the biggest and the baddest to be mine. I wanted to dream I could have them. I lurked in corridors, listened and bided my time. Whomever got the most praise, whomever was spoken of with the most awe, with widened eyes...those were the ones I selected. I wrote their names carefully on my parchment, and carried it in my robe, next to my skin, hidden, so none suspected.

 

And, when the time came it was a list of the names of the very best that I submitted. I would ask for these Kel, I would take them and they would be mine. If they agreed. If they could stomach me. If the best would come to me. I had only one thing to offer. My talent.

 

My hair was long and thick, charcoal grey. lustrous, but a common color that attracted no special attention. I kept it tied back most of the time, in the manner of an adult male instead of wound around with yards of gold, flowers and vines like a courting youth might. Those hairstyles required a maid, and I had none, or I might have further upset the court with the display. Besides, I had grown to dislike the touch of strangers.

 

My eyes were common grey, a few shades darker them my hair, and not luminous like a ffey's should be, nor with the aching clarity of a goblin's. My skin was my best feature, pale and clear beneath the exquisite webbing marble of cream, green and bronze, even a touch of gold in the right light. Yet I lacked the shine of the ffey, and the velvet toughness, the remarkable, flawless texture that distinguished a goblin.

 

I was stronger than a ffey male, but far weaker than a Kel-goblin. Short for both Kel males and females, more muscular than a ffey, less than a goblin. My ears were ffey round, not goblin points. I was fanged, and no ffey or goblin child was ever fanged, it was a sign of maturity, of full adulthood. I was an unheard of genetic perversion. An example to hold up, to prove that the ghod's dictate should never be ignored, ffey and goblin should not mate and mix.

 

Most of my time was spent performing my duties as a Historian. For that was my talent, my rare and revered talent, that perversely was as admired as my tainted blood was not. A ghost or shadow walker if you have heard those slang terms and find them more familiar. I called into manifestation ghosts and spoke to the dead who had lived the history. I sought to regain lost knowledge, to correct and fill out the histories already in the House of Records. It was a job I loved. And for the years of my "adult" life from fourteen to nineteen, it was what I did every day, and I was happy doing it.

 

Prior to my appointment the House of Records had been empty for thirty nine years. No other Historian was alive now. There was only me. No one argued that I was good at my job. People who would not speak to me in the halls of either court came to the Crypts and the House of Records seeking my help in questions of family or general history. Asked me to raise the ghosts of their own personal family or loved ones.

 

Then, shortly before my nineteenth birthday, after many years of peace, there began the rumblings of disquiet, the whispers of discontent so great that war was hinted at. And I was taken away from my work. I will tell you how it happened.


	3. Part 3

Certainly it was not told to me so plainly, that I would have to go from my place of refuge and work and not return. Not at first. But that changed quickly, it became clear to me, that it was the intent all along.

 

At the time, other members of my genetic family on the ffey side had gone out, away from the court, and among the humankind. They began a killing spree. A "personal war" it was said by the most conservative of the ffey.,Tthere were many of those. Personal wars had to be respected, it was traditional not to question them. The reasons were private and could rightly be kept so. The wars were required to preserve honor. Honor sometime understood only by the wronged party. The wronged could not be compelled to explain.

 

But, when I heard of the slaughter, and who it was doing the killing, I thought it was no more than an opportunity for sanctioned serial killing. I knew the men who were doing the killing, and they were not the kind to take up a fight on noble grounds. They liked killing, liked blood running in rivers over their skin, into crevices and creases, reveled in the horrific pain of others. They were murders and sadists, not saviors, not noble in the fine sense of the word. My own word on it. I had cause to know. I had hidden from them often enough.

 

My cousin, king Jenus of the ffey, agreed with my thoughts on the killers. We had spoken about the two, one his brother, the other his friend. He knew them as well as I or better. They had fought side by side with him when he was prince Jenus, during the last minor wars. They were warriors many times decorated, and still they were murderers in my eyes. Heroes of wartime often become the madmen of peace time.

 

Jenus knew the killing had to stop. The tension between ffey and human was too great. Any excuse would send us all into a true war. The humans outnumbered the ffey and other preternatural folk by more than a good billion. The ffey were not ready for war, not yet, perhaps never. There were many, many humans and they loved technology, especially technology that could be turned to fighting war. To destruction and bloodshed. They had vast armories filled with many terrible weapons.

 

There was still time left to talk, negotiate and avoid actual fighting. At least the ffey thought so. The goblins, angered, had given up on that idea. The majority of goblinfolk believed the time was nigh to go to battle, before apocalypse struck the Earth, and apocalypse brought on by the human scourge across the Earth. Pillaging and destroying it's resources, poisoning the air, water and soil.

 

Goblins cherished the Earth more than any other race except the trolls. But the trolls would not be stirred out of their great burrows easily. Not for less than catastrophe. And no one, not even the mighty goblins wanted to be in the way if the trolls did emerge.

 

Ironic that it was the ffey who's majority wanted peace to prevail, were desperate for peace in truth, who had killers out among the humans and humankind's descendants, the lycanthropes and vampires. Killers that might bring on the war the ruling ffey were scrambling to avoid. Killers who might precipitate a full scale, race-driven, blood feud.

 

The human newscasters were reporting on the killings daily. In print, on the evening and noon news. On the Internet. Accusing the ffey of not caring, of deliberately ignoring the slaughter, of secretly supporting the killers. Of promoting wholesale genocide.

 

That, I thought, was painting it a little thick. Of course they were not completely wrong. Many ffey did say that all must stand behind our nobles and their honor-killings. To do nothing to prevent them from attaining justice...a mad justice only they could see and measure.

 

The situation was tense. Jenus sent messages and we had talked privately via water and crystal sendings, but months passed without resolution. At last Jenus himself called on me in the depths of the great Crypt that housed the ffey and goblin dead. The House of Records. My home.

 

It was Kohl, one of my four goblin adjuncts, who announced him first.

 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

Kohl was sitting at the table cleaning his blade with long, sure, mesmerizing strokes. And I was watching him, distracted from my writing by the flexing and relaxing of his arms...when he looked up suddenly. He came to his feet in a rush, one sword in hand the other at his hip, tossing oiling cloths aside, stirring naked Beyan and Fais to sitting from where they napped. One supine, the other prone, both half buried in the cool soil of the floor.

 

Thae drifted in from one of the inner rooms, blinking his coal black eyes. Kohl strode to the door and looked out and up the broad staircase that led down from the outside. He was silent for long enough that I stopped editing the Record I had pulled down from it's shelf. I lay down my pen, and started across the floor towards him. That brought Beyan and Fais to their feet, hot on my heels, grabbing for their hip wraps and blades. Thae drifted noiselessly after the rest of us.

 

Goblins preferred to go unclothed but for a simple loincloth much of the time. Here in our house of males, we often went completely nude. Goblin skin is exquisitely sensitive, and beautifully patterned, something to show off and enjoy. But...not in front of just anyone.

 

For the company of strangers my adjuncts wore anything from hip cloths to full concealing robes. I habitually wore a little more than they preferred, having been raised in the far more modest ffey court until I was twelve. I chose the goblin mode of dress only after I moved into the House of Records as it's only living Historian.

 

Of course I was not warmly welcomed in the goblin court either. I visited a mere two years, prowling it's halls, then was able to formally call the House of Records my home when my talent was confirmed as an acknowledged Historian. I finally had a place of peace and solace. Solitude. Contemplation. A place away from people who looked down their noses at me. A place of respect. I had the beginnings of power.

 

Kohl turned to me, putting his broad, tall body between me and whatever was out there. His thick, muscular tail stiff and horribly still, lifted off the floor in a quiet immobility, a sign of impending violence. A warning to any who knew goblins. His arm swept me back a few steps, so I was behind him instead of beside him. His shoulders were wide and powerful, his waist slim but strong, not at all frail in it's narrowness, and his hips and legs were heavy with muscle.

 

His face was tight, almost angry as he looked down at me. I knew he wasn't angry with me, not this time. So that meant he wasn't pleased with whatever was about to happen, whoever was approaching. His clear, grey eyes sparked with sliver lights, like sunlight flickering on water. I saw the tips of his fangs glint as they extended further, his dark tongue flicking out to lick his lips in anticipation. Not dainty fangs like the kind the humankind vampires had, but strong, sharp, curved weapons, formidable ones that extended far past his lower lip when fully deployed. Not mere feeding fangs.

 

Thae was next to me by then, tall enough to look over Kohl's shoulder and see what Kohl was seeing. I grabbed Thae's arm, he flinched, but didn't pull away, he didn't look down either.

 

"What?" I asked, my hair raising along my nape, craning my neck, trying to see around their combined bulk and failing. Kohl's tail pressed me back, rigid and immovable across my chest and waist. I did hear a distant sound, faintly, one I failed to identify. Feet on stone stairs?

 

"What is it?" I persisted, skin crawling with anxiety, tension and anticipation. Kohl never behaved this way when a supplicant came to beg for a ghost calling. This was something different. Thae slid close to me, our bodies tight together, he only rarely came this near to me. He crowded me back and few more steps from the door. He sniffed at the air, hissed.

 

"The ffey king and his minions come." Kohl half snarled, lip curling. Kohl was full blooded Kel-goblin, his skin a lustrous green/grey marbled pattern with the feel or living velvet. His face was sculpted, masculine, not really handsome, but I would not be able to come up with one change that would improve up on him. He was the way he should be. Utterly male, utterly Kohl. My first adjunct, he was everything I wanted to be.

 

Goblins are not fond of ffey, not really. The ffey were a poor offshoot of the much older goblin line. Why Kohl put up with me, with my mixed blood...I had never been able to discover, but I had never had cause to question his loyalty or his dedication to me since we had pledged our bond. Kohl's goblin pedigree was better than my own, yet he was my adjunct, he had sacrificed to be with me. He served me if you could call it that. In reality my adjuncts had as much control of our relations as did I, and within the courts they held a far higher level of respect than did I.

 

"What would bring Jenus here?" I wondered aloud, then, "Don't be nasty to him. He is a king and my cousin." I reminded Kohl as Beyan and Fais reached us. They crowded close, Thae was comfortable enough with them, familiar enough he didn't freeze or startle as we all pressed together, and they all, as one, conspired to press me further back from the empty doorway.


	4. Part 4

Fais hissed at my words as he tied his hip cloth, sarong style, defiantly not covering much of himself, knowing that naked skin distressed the ffey. He left the shimmering dark cloth to ride low on his hips, baring his incredible abs and almost all of his right leg, to the crest of his hip. He raised a hand and I grabbed it before he could ensorcel the doorway to keep Jenus out. Thae looked at me at last, his huge, jet black eyes gleamed in his peach colored face. He looked at my hand on Fais' arm then at my other hand on his arm. He moved his arm out of my reach, so my hand fell away, but stayed next to me.

 

Beyan, who was more the shy and proper goblin, wrapped himself from armpit to knee, tying his cloth over one shoulder and pulled his loose robe up over both shoulders, his two blades sheathed at his left hip in easy reach.

 

Perhaps Beyan had his fill of being ogled at the goblin court as he grew, because Beyan was an uncommon beauty even among a stunning race of beings. His skin was touched and stroked for years before he gained the position and status to forbid it. The physical threat to back up his denial of strangers who sought to caress him.

 

That the king was my cousin held no weight with any of my adjuncts, not in how they felt about him or his people. I knew they did limit their expressions of displeasure with the ffey king to verbal protestations, snide comments, bumps and jostling and inconveniencing him, refraining from real physical confrontation for my sake.

 

When goblin and ffey met, typically there was violence, discord, arguments, often bloodshed, sometimes rape. My goblin adjuncts knew that Jenus treated me well and harbored true affection for me. But it nevertheless took great power of will for them to refrain from expelling him when he came to see me or called me to him, those rare times. After all he was the king of a rival people. A lesser people in goblin eyes.

 

"Ffey king." Fais said, a sour expression on his grey/green face. He shared Kohl's unusual coloring, except he was more grey than green, other than that they were nearly twins in appearance and size, though not in temperament. Fais was more quiet, Kohl more aggressive, take charge. There had been great outcry when I dared choose two of the grey/greens for my adjuncts. Two of the rarest most prized Kel-goblins, and Fais a priest of DanFii, no less, greatly coveted for his magical and spiritual skill. Meant for far greater persons than I to bond.

 

But that small uproar was nothing to what occurred when I asked for Beyan. That reaction had been a near riot, dozens of others had their eyes on him. Wanted him. Lusted after him and thought he would go to them willingly, thought he would be the glory of their own adjunct corps.

 

When Beyan instead come to me, the death threats became open, no longer hidden behind polite but deadly court etiquette and protocol as they tried to intimidate me into withdrawing my requests. For three weeks while the bans were posted I watched everything and everyone, sure that I would be killed before I could face the goblin nobles and bond my adjuncts to me. If they accepted my claim. For they, my named choices, held the right to refuse me.

 

When I made my choices I was a child of near fourteen. Five long years ago. I was angry and defiant, ridiculed and belittled for what I had no control over, and for a long enough time that I wanted to strike back with the only weapons I had available to me. I was entitled to adjunct companions, and I asked for the absolute best, most sought after, and dared that they be refused to me.

 

Funny, but I had met none of them, spoken to none of my four choices, I had no idea what they looked like, or if they were good hearted. But I had heard them spoken of in desirous whispers, spoken of with unmistakable longing. Goblin law was on my side, tradition and custom as well. I waited for the court to break their own rules, so I could show them as the hypocrites they were. In the way of a defiant child, I did not know which I wanted more, the nobles to refuse to honor the law and demonstrate their dishonor for all to witness, or to have in my possession the adjuncts I had chosen. But not even the royals had the courage to challenge millennia of law it turned out.

 

No one was more shocked than I to hear all of my chosen agreed to meet before the court accepting my right to call them in initial selection. The agreed to stand before the queen and the nobles of her choosing and answer to me.

 

I met them, four strangers, giants, in the great hall of the goblin palace, witnessed by less then a dozen mostly disapproving goblin nobles. I stared at the goblins I said I wanted for mine own, recognizing none. I had seen none, not even in passing. So tall, so male, so much older than myself. Only one was what could be called romantically beautiful. Yet the way they strode into the room, two grey/greens, one red/brown/black, and one gold/brown/ivory, took my breath away.

 

A gasp floated through the ranks of the witnesses. A few seemed to believe my choices made me interesting and worthy of notice, they looked me over with great curiosity. But the rest tried to get me to withdraw, blaming me for ruining the lives and reputations of each potential adjunct, for daring to propose tying them to me, my name and my mixed, fouled blood.

 

The four Kel-goblins towered high above me, ideal specimens of goblin warriors, of goblin manhood. I was close to speechless, staring at their proud faces, the wide set of their shoulders, intimidated almost into slinking away, releasing them, unable to face them, such as I was. Until I became angry, and then I answered the protesting nobles with the lack of respect they earned at least in my view. The view of a child with too many unearned wrongs heaped on his head. My blood, that very fluid they condemned had given me the right to ask for this. I would have it.

 

"Do you force me to change these choices? Do you demand it of me?" I had asked, my voice low and tight. I seated myself in one of the large royal chairs the nobles didn't dare use. For, just as the rooms accepted who they chose, so did these particular chairs. They welcomed me.

 

Folding my hands over my flat belly. I made sure I showed my fangs, casually, every chance I got, as if it were accidental. I saw the distaste on most of the faces, the idea of a sub-adult with fangs....it was perverse, like sexualizing a child. They turned their eyes from me, unwilling to see me.

 

"I state now, these four are the ones I choose, and I insist they be allowed to agree or to refuse without pressure from any of you. The law binds you. Follow the law." I hissed the words.

 

"We merely point out there are others more suited...." One male said, his superior, paternal attitude finding no welcoming chord in me. I stared at him, not hiding my complete lack of interest in what he had to say, or what advice he gave. He wanted me to back off, to accept lesser, inferior goblins, and maybe to be too afraid to chose any at all.

 

He smoothed his jeweled robes as he smiled ingratiatingly false, nodding sagely, as if he were imparting valuable wisdom. "Surely you understand why these should go to others...." He murmured in his kindly tone. I cut him off.

 

"No. I do not understand. You know nothing of me. You only know that to you I am inferior. How can you know what is suitable for me? Your words are unimportant, ill-advised. I ask only for what our law entitles me to, nothing more. I am royal, you are merely noble." I murmured just loud enough far them all to hear. It took a moment for my words to register, mild as my tone had been, it camouflaged the meaning for a few seconds.

 

A heavy, shocked silence fell over the group. I saw the queen raise her hand, and I would swear she hid a smile. I waited to see if he would bring up my tainted blood, if he would stoop so low.

 

"Come here, you little freak!" The male leapt to his feet, striding towards me, his outstretched arms pointing at me accusingly. His fangs, puny next to mine I saw, bared in a display of lost control. I stayed seated, watching him barrel towards me. Color rode high on his cheeks. Wondering what would happen if he assaulted me here, before witnesses.

 

And for the first time Kohl moved between me and a potential physical threat. At the time I did not even know him from the other three. But once he had moved, the other three followed his lead, cutting the advancing male creche-goblin off, forming a wall of brawn, of protection. They said nothing, my adjunct candidates, but the look in their eyes was enough. Wisely the noble chose to yell at me, not try to push past them and get his hands on me.

 

"Do you know who I am? How dare you speak to me like this! You are making a mistake, you will regret it. Apologize at once!" He stopped short of the group of adjuncts, his words degenerating to his own horrid hiss. The noble demanded an apology of me, his reddish webbing blazing, his full robes showing me I was not his equal, not his intimate, and undeserving of his polite acceptance or his consideration.

 

I looked from one face to the other, all around the room, slowly committing them to memory. They were outraged, most of them, and I wanted to savor it as well as remember who they were. If those nobles had their way, I would be eliminated, killed. Or at least exiled.

 

Yet two faces among them, I recognized as having come to me to have their ghosts called, though as a child I should never be asked to do so. They had not cared then if harm should befall me, and they did not care now. I helped them, set their minds at ease, yet they did not raise their voices to speak for me now. Neither met my eyes, their own unfocused, looking over my head, behind me. I was nothing more than a tool to be used. A common and unsavory tool that did not deserve recognition. One to be hidden from sight when company came.

 

The queen was watching it all. Her dress was brief and informal, what she would wear for a family gathering. I was surprised by the grateful welling of emotion that rose in my breast, near to choking me. Two others among the nobles wore casual dress, similar to the queen's. The remaining number were fully covered, layered in formal robes as if they were ffey, not goblin, that despite the smothering heat. Marking me as an outsider to them. Denying me their skin and their markings.

 

I met the queen's eyes, and she crooked one corner of her mouth at me. She supported my choices, admired me for my audacity and gall, would not speak out against me. When her nobles tried to catch her eye, she looked out over their heads, above the fray, mimicking what they had done to me. Toying with the heavy gold torque she wore as a symbol of her office and rule, she pretended they were not seeking her intervention. She let me struggle on. I would sink or swim on my own. What happened, good or bad, would not be laid at her doorstep.

 

The man who demanded I apologize was Yegen Lord Veyyn. Yes, in answer to his question, I did know who he was. His family was one of the oldest, most respected, most influential. His young niece was the one I had overheard talking with great longing about the gold/brown/ivory one who later I scribed onto my list. In fact it was because of her desire for him that I included his name on my request. I didn't want him specifically, I wanted to take something away from the most privileged. Not the most noble of reasons to ask for him, but I was a vengeful child then.

 

Several others joined in the call, rising to their feet, arms upraised, but none dared to come forward and test the mettle of the Kel who stood between us. "Apologize!" They called, shouting at me. Shaking fists. I crossed my arms over my belly, turned my gaze away from them, refusing to acknowledge Lord Veyyn again.

 

That was how I received my first three adjuncts.

 

Last year Kohl had one day gone out of the House of Records, returned with and adolescent male Kel-goblin. Black skinned, with intricate yellow, orange, crimson webbing beginning at his hips, combining in an intense rainbow of colors that looked like the inside of a ripe, succulent peach, and the darkest eyes I ever beheld. His hair was yards of midnight black, streaked with a blue so dark as to be another shade of black itself. He bound it up as was expected, in a boy's club at the base of his neck, more than twice my height when it was let down to be washed.

 

He was a year or more from maturity, but Kohl asked me to accept him. I did without much thought, going back to my volumes of history, barely noticing the addition to our household.

 

Not until a month later did I find out he was mute. His name was Thae. And I suppose he was as beautiful in his was way as Beyan. But his looks didn't matter much to me.


	5. Part 5

Fais' low growl returned my attention to the now. His growl was deep and rumbling, raising the hair along my nape in a second wave. He pinned me with his large, smoky eyes, repeated, "Ffey king. Ffey." His lip curling. As if that explained all. As if that answered me and my instruction to be kind to Jenus as it should be answered, in his estimation anyway.

 

His tail joined Kohl's in herding me back from the doorway, wrapped snuggly around my waist. Thae stepped back, letting them move me. I gave up and turned aside. They weren't going to let me close enough to see anything. The two adult males stood shoulder to shoulder as wall between the inner rooms and outside, one sunlit green and grey, the other shadows of the same color scheme.

 

I walked back to the long, polished, dark wood table where my current book rested. I closed the heavy tome and put it to one side, my fingers lingering with reverence on the tooled leather covering.

 

To leave the Records open too long was to damage their bindings, causing the spine to crack, the pages to become dry and brittle. Most were centuries old, and needed special care not to crumble. Handling them was a kin to a religious experience for me. Inside the ancient covers were tales and histories of men a women, Goblin and ffey from long ago. The collective memory of both my people, I admitted when I was in the mood to claim both. Perhaps most were long forgotten by everyone, even their blood descendants, but at one time a Historian had listened to their shades, recorded their words, their lives and cherished them once more.

 

I lit two more candles with ghost flame. Real fire down here would be too potentially destructive, thousands of years of recorded history would vanish in a brief hour's conflagration. The mere thought of that happening, the enormity of potential loss, was enough to stop my breath, a loss too great to contemplate. The extra light was for the ffey, so they could see. Goblins need very little light.

 

I, a half goblin, was able to see in light the ffey would stumble around in. Light too dim for humankind to realize it was not pitch darkness. My adjunct's vision is even better than my own. Fais has the best sight, he can discern writing in light that to me is near blackness. Kohl's hearing is more acute than the others, and ivory/gold/brown Beyan can scent things or people from literally miles away.

 

Thae? He seems to be gifted with an ability to not be noticed. Perhaps because he says nothing, visitors often forget that he is there. I am not sure I would call that a talent. If he has another gift I do not know it yet. Even after a year bonded to him, many goblins do not know he is ours, and some are truly disconcerted, upset, when they notice him in the House of Records. He is after all, a sub-adult.I often wonder how he can be overlooked by any, with his skin graced with all the glowing and color of a sunset.

 

Beyan, the sweetest of my fierce adjuncts, has pale honey-gold eyes, so clear as to seem translucent, twin pools that kept falling deeper and deeper as one looks into them, surrounded by eyelashes of gold and black lace. A golden eyed goblin had not been seen in two generations, and now he was mine. His hair was streaks of brown, gold and ivory, falling in waves to his knees when freed from confinement. He had been the one Lord Veyyn's kinswoman mooned over.

 

I had taken there of the rarest of the rare. Leaving many of the other goblin royals disgruntled as they searched for adjunct Kel who would match these. They had not for one moment thought I would dare ask for the adjuncts that I did. It had given me great, malicious joy to know I had won out over the other goblin nobles.

 

Thae if he were mature now, would have excited as much demand as any of the others. You only had to look at him to know that, young as he was, his beauty was so physical, so unusual, he was destined to be coveted. When one looked into his eyes, so very pitch dark, and felt the power of his attention...his future demand was in no doubt. I could never put it into words, but to me Thae did not feel like a sub-adult. He was elemental already, years before he should have been. He was more than normally talented physically, he could literally run up walls and leap with what looked like no effort at all.

 

I had asked Kohl where he found Thae. Kohl shrugged and said he had been sworn to him when the boy was born, he would say nothing more. So an arranged bond probably meant to protect Thae from someone or something. Or to pay a debt owed between families.

 

I lost only one of my original chosen.

 

As a royal goblin I had the right to four adjuncts. But when the fourth, Nehls, heard the final requirement set on my adjuncts by the goblin queen, he bowed out of the choosing. I did not blame him. I fully expected the other three to do the same. For the last requirement was that they should not father any children to pass on my name. The children of an adjunct take on the name of the patron. And the court would rise up against the queen if she supported that. My dirty blood, my cursed name, both must die with me. She had no choice. And she offered no apology after the ceremony, not even as she hugged me, for calling my blood an abomination.

 

I seethed over that. Also that I should never be a father. That I was forbidden a family. That who I was, through no fault of my own, took from me the right to hold a small life in my hands, wet and warm from it's birth and know he or she was mine. From my blood, from my body, my seed. I would never have that. That to even dream of it...was to blaspheme.

 

Nehls could not bear to have his fertility taken from him. To stand under the hand of the high priest and feel the life being taken from his seed, so that no child could come of any coupling of his. He had no children yet. He wanted them as every goblin wanted. Kohl had children. As did Fais and even Beyan. Of course with Beyan's beauty he had many offers. But only one had resulted in a child. A girl child so exquisite that she shone like the sun's rays. I saw her only one time, when she and her mother came to beg him to renounce me. Not a child any longer, she was decades older than I, but Beyan, he was so clearly her father, that in that moment she was a child in my eyes. And I saw her, in a dream, as she had been, held in his arms, raised with love and the wonder every child deserves.

 

Bonding to me, as I was male, meant no child could rise from my body following any coupling with my adjuncts. Even so, even after the vows of faithfulness were taken and given, the goblin court insisted on the priest's hand taking the fertility from each of the Kel who bonded me. That they be ritually emasculated, unable to lie with a woman and bring life to her body. A punishment to them. A punishment to me.

 

I, half blooded, took the cream of the adjunct pool, and after the three of them confirmed my choice and accepted me as their patron, no one could take them back. After they stood under the knife with me, had the chevron-ed wounds carved into their arms, their chests and their backs, blood running down the sliced flesh, until it was stopped with the rubbing in of earth from the soil where I was born. The iron colored soil that I had not known was my cradle. Yet, these others, strangers, had known.

 

I looked around at them, knowing then that some of them, these cold-faced nobles, had been witness to my birth. That they had stood next to he who was my father, ankle deep in the red loam, and watched as my mother labored to bring me to life. They witnessed my first breath. Yet they held no love for me. No connection. No awe at the cycle of life, the breath that kept us all living. That brought us into this plane and kept us here.

 

Once we became officially bonded each of my adjuncts became royal kin. Even if the goblins at large could turn their backs on me and deny me my right of position on the grounds my blood was impure, none could do the same to my royal adjuncts. It presented quite a problem, and with the fierce, joyous defiance of an adolescent, I enjoyed every minute of it. I rubbed their faces in it. Another reason for the Pure to despise me.

 

Serving me did not guarantee my Kel any honor. I was outcast, living on the fringes of the goblin society. Only my singular talent, one that made me Historian kept me from being thrown out further. But a Historian was a ghod-gift. Rare and prized and to deny the gift invited the anger of the ghods. Not even riled goblins wanted to risk that.

 

Each of my chosen three had agreed to bond to me. Willingly not coerced. And it was done. I sometimes wondered myself, why they had not laughed and turned from me. Why had they given up so much to follow me. To live with me in relative isolation. They had known little of me at the time, though all had heard my name whispered and cursed. So it was not affection that moved them to Bond me.

 

Serving me granted no honor, no position they couldn't have earned with others. In the past there had been adjunct kings. Huge Kel goblins who sat on the goblin throne. I would not grant them anything so grand. In fact I couldn't even grant them the peace and security that came with a bonding. There was nothing, no greater desire in a Kel than to be taken adjunct. Their souls cried out for it. But I gave them pain with my bonding. I gave them whispers and doubts spoken behind raised hands.

 

If we spent time at court they had to guard my back with zeal, to keep knives from our flesh. None tried to kill me, but the feeling was always there, a tension, a will, waiting and festering in the more conservative. Those who saw me as the representation of the destruction of their society. Of what the ghods themselves had forbidden. I was, by my birth, a heretic. Because the ghods' own words spoke against the mixing of the two bloods.

 

Goblin and ffey should not bring life together into being. Any other combination, yes, life was after all precious and to be cherished. But not Goblin and ffey. Such was not sanctioned. The priests shuddered and more often than not turned from me, averting their faces when I passed. 

 

Yet, the dead, they spoke to me. The revered ancestors, never did one who I reached for deny me, or refuse to speak through me. I was Historian. And blessed by the dead.


	6. Part 6

No. I could not give my adjuncts as much as they deserved. Without fertile seed to offer, with the magical proscription on their bodies, they could not aspire to the high royals any longer. While others bowed to them and smiled, still wanting them, I was shunned and treated with disdain.

 

Even if they could not give life, they could be desired for pleasure. I waited for them to dishonor me, to succumb to the seductions, but they did not. There were no blatant affairs, no shameful declarations. No displays of open interest from them to any others, though many showed interest to my Kels.

 

When I had asked Beyan why he agreed to my choice, given the many offers piled at his own door, he said only that he had admired my spirit, seeing me face off with the elders, and watching me not give in to their ruthlessly applied pressure had decided him. Then he tweaked a lock of my hair and said he'd always had a thing for grey eyes. I stared at him, not sure whether I wanted that to be true or afraid that it was. He laughed at me while I flushed, his fingers affectionately ruffling my hair.

 

When I asked Kohl replied he had no choice but to accept me. Once he had automatically stepped in front of the elder who was threatening me...he had to agree to our binding. No one else would have him. I did not believe that. There were many who would still have him, as a lover if not a bond. There were many alliances of passion he could have if he would deign to forsake or stretch his vow to me.

 

Fais smiled and told me that initially he went along because his life-long friend, Kohl, committed to me. They always intended to bond together. And he thought I might be more exciting than the laid back life at court others were promising. Politics and back-biting are exciting and interesting to some, but not to my priest. Adventure just might be. At least I wasn't more of the usual, he said.

 

Thae I had never asked. After all Kohl brought him to me. I had not searched for him or submitted a request for him. He was not asked if he accepted me, I was asked if I accepted him. The opposite of what had occurred between me and the other three adjuncts. Thae was technically too young to be an adjunct. But his family agreed to waive the age requirement, did so voluntarily so great was their need to see their son with Kohl. They wanted the two together very much indeed. A little thing like age should not stand in the way. And the Queen placed her seal next to the notation in the Record of Bonds without a single comment on the irregularity. For whatever reason, it was done.

 

Not a very romantic start, but quite typical of goblin bonds. The patron, me in this case, is often far younger than his or her adjuncts. The purpose of the bond is to form a family unit, a protected grouping so the noble patron may actually make it to adulthood. Life in the courts is not idyllic, not kind nor gentle. Life is not guaranteed, not even for the long lived races. There is no such thing as immortality, it is a myth like any other, it grows with the telling. Traps lay everywhere for those not on guard. The ladder to power had few rungs and many seeking feet. Death removed the feet already on them, or seeking to climb up higher, in the way of others also seeking to rise.

 

Jenus led the two ffey he brought with him into the cool dimness of the House of records. He knew my adjuncts would not harm him in any permanent way. But he knew they might not feel the same reluctance to lay hands on any other ffey who accompanied him. He endeavored to keep himself between the goblins and his heavily draped companions.

 

He paused in the doorway, looking from one to the other of the tall, powerfully built, grey-green goblins standing like menacing pillars on either side of the door. Trying to assess the level of actual threat in the room.

 

Neither goblin smiled at him. Both glared. Fais' claws eased out of the tips of his fingers, excruciatingly slowly, with a sound like creaking leather, a sound which told me he was fighting for control. Extending claws was usually silent. Thae stood in the middle of the path, long limbed and almost skinny, silent, his fearsome eyes fastened on Jenus, his hair a gleaming twist draping down over his nape and back, sliver clips weaving through the dark strands like tiny swords. I had watched as Kohl had put them there not many hours before.

 

Jenus was tall for a ffey. His head reached to the shoulder of my big adjuncts, who all but Thae, towered at nearly seven feet tall. Yet the breadth of their shoulders made the ffey king seem little more than a undeveloped boy. The crown of my own head only reached to the middle of their great, deep chests, though my own shoulders were wider than Jenus'. Jenus could not challenge any of them for muscle, he was considered handsome and manly for a ffey, a decorated warrior, but not in the same ballpark as the Kel-goblins.

 

Goblins were in general very well muscled, those suited to be adjuncts the most so, and mine were superb among all others. So much muscle caused some to make the error of believing them slow and ponderous, but I had never witnessed any who could move faster and with more deadly grace, feral quickness than my adjuncts.

 

I stepped around the slender Thae, then Fais, his silky, green streaked, black hair fanning out to brush my arm in his agitation, his prehensile tail gliding protectively around my waist. His desire was to stop me, he barely managed to restrain the impulse as I embraced my cousin, tipping up my head to allow Jenus a kinsman's kiss of welcome. Jenus smiled his tight smile, I sensed he was on guard and did not wish to relax, which was wise of him.

 

Only something serious would force him to come to me, instead of sending word for me to go to him at his own court or to meet in a neutral location. Either would be safer than coming here into the goblin's enclave, though admittedly we were on the outskirts. And the House of Records was open to all peoples and races.

 

Jenus held my hand as I stepped back, his hand, long fingered and larger than mine, I bowed a slight bow to him. I did him the favor of keeping my body between him and Fais. My other hand gripped Fais' flexing tail to prevent and 'accident' before it happened.

 

"Be welcome, Jenus." I said grasping his hand firmly in mine. It was good to touch him again. I was pleased to see him. His fingers entwined i mine, cool and betraying his nervousness by how hard he clutched at me. The figures behind him were heavily cloaked and veiled, both shorter and more slightly built than he. Ffey or perhaps, though I thought it unlikely, some of the larger demi-ffey.

 

I felt the binding of privacy shields and knew Jenus had wanted their identities to be secret from whoever watched him come here. Spies were common at both courts and secrets almost impossible to keep as people dug for information and power through it. Both the veiled ones kept their heads bowed so I could not glimpse their faces.

 

"Come, sit down and tell me your news," I urged him, casting a baleful glance over my shoulder in the direction of the menacing goblin males, willing them to behave. Kohl and Fais blinked lazily at me, very still, intent on the three ffey who waited nervously for whatever would occur.

 

Kohl turned an unreadable look on Thae who faded back out of our way, his dark eyes locked with the grey orbs of the older goblin. Beyan tilted his head fractionally, face completely neutral, his exquisite, golden eyes gleaming. Jenus let me lead him and his two attendant toward the vast table in the center of the room surrounded by shelves and the cherished, ancient texts I cared for and wrote in every day.

 

"The news is not good," he said as we walked, keeping his voice low, but above a whisper. I noted his hand was shaking, or rather trembling just a little. My eyebrows raised, I stroked his wrist, freeing Fais' tail, trying to offer Jenus some further measure of comfort. Fais flicked his tail, but missed Jenus by a full inch. A deliberate miss, his aim was far too good for it to be anything less. I'd have to remember to thank him for that later.

 

"The killing has not stopped or even decreased. The humans are calling them, my brother and my friend, "The Butchers". Demanding action at once by the ffey to apprehend them, to put them to death. In some circles there is a call to outlaw all ffey, to stop and question all non humans traveling without permits issued by human authorities." Jenus told me, the upset plain on his face. Two who he had counted close to him, who he called friend, were betraying him, causing a conflict that might be used to topple his rule, and thus end in his own death.

 

"Outlaw the ffey? What does that mean? Expel them all from the lands of humankind? The lands the ffey let them have for use in the first place? The land the goblins lent the ffey even before that? The humans have not the right to cast such an edict." I half asked, half stated as we sat.

 

I pushed salt and bread towards my cousin, finding the oil pour and drizzling the warm, hearty bread with a thin stream. Outlawing the ffey seemed too complicated, impossible, but that wouldn't stop the humans from trying. Hmmm. They were self-righteous, forgetting that what they had they did not own alone. Yet so many generations of their short lives had passed since the lands were loaned...they might truly not recall who held them in reality.

 

"They have never lacked in arrogance, in that they are clearly ffey offspring." Kohl growled deep and low, drawing a glare from Jenus, a pretty mild one considering he was a ffey nearly alone looking at a Kel-goblin of sharp temper, but it was a glare none the less. Kohl ignored it. He examined his own, gleaming, bared claws. If he started licking and cleaning them I was going to have to hit him.

 

It wasn't until we sat tat the table that I saw who accompanied Jenus the ffey king. They lowered the veils that had completely covered their faces. my memory alerted me tot he knowledge that i had seen both of them in the past. But even my Historian's eye couldn't place them right away.

 

One was male and one female. The woman was poised, letting her hood fall back onto her slender shoulders, her small, pointed chin lifted, regally beautiful. A few years older than me, five at most. The male was probably the same age as I, no more, sot grown up by ffey or goblin standards, remaining, as I, still on the razor's verge between adolescence and adulthood. The glimpses of his face I managed to catch were of unlined, smooth cheeks and chin. But mostly he succeeded in keeping his face hidden but for the first glimpse I had stolen when he drew back the veil. He lowered his head after that. It was clear that if it had been his choice, the veil would have stayed in place.

 

"Welcome, I am sorry I did not greet you before, noble-born," I said to them, wondering now even more why they were here with Jenus. I could think of no reason.

 

I turned and caught Beyan's eye. I was determined to be polite for my cousin's sake. In my own house I would not be spoken of as a poor host. Besides, it was good practice. There might come a day when I needed the tools to move within the ffey court for a time, and friendly faces, or not actively hostile ones, would be welcome if that came to be. I could hardly imagine such a need, but it might come to pass.

 

Beyan responded to my look, coming up along my side, allowing one hand to cup the back of my neck, kneading my muscles gently, soothingly. The gentleness of his touch was a warning. For me to be careful, and for my guests to be certain that no move be made against me.

 

"Please," I asked, my tone even, "bring two more plates."

 

Beyan's long lashes dropped over his uncanny eyes, and he bowed, a slight bending of acknowledgment.

 

Rigid with some strong emotion, Thae went after Bey. The two ffey watched Beyan and Thae, the woman with opened mouth, her expression plain and easily read, as if she could not credit that any goblin should be so beautiful. Not for the first time I felt a sweet satisfaction that they were mine. But her stunned regard somehow annoyed me as well, reminding me how the ffey thought they were a further refinement, an improvement on the crudity of face and form and courtly behavior that was the goblin norm. Ffey gave goblins no credit for beauty or culture or finesse, seeing them as mere barbarians and vicious primitives, until forced to admit otherwise.

 

As for Beyan, he would play along with me, with my guests for now.


	7. Part 7

I watched as Beyan moved away from me, a lithe, killing machine of unequaled construction, blessed by the ghods' hand. Some days I watched him and my others spar for hours, marveling at how they moved, at the perfection of skill and poetry of execution, the blurred speed of their weapons making a noise like moaning as they cut through the air; the oiled glide of their battle steps, the patterns of their kata.

 

Decades of training turned warfare into a dance of fearsome beauty. My education had been clandestine, and mostly academic. But at the age of fifteen I started to learn real fighting, as I would have if I were a royal male and pureblood, not merely a royal bastard and worse than impure, a heretic by birth.

 

Now, after the years I trained, I was nearly as good as young Thae, in fact he was often my sparring partner, his speed and sinuous grace challenging me without causing either of us hurt. Only his uncanny strength made him better than me. I was smaller, but dogged, determined, tenacious.

 

But...I pulled my thoughts away from fighting skills, and the beauty of gifted warriors plying them....I had other concerns far more pressing.

 

I wondered what purpose there was to bringing two unknown ffey into my sanctuary, why challenge and chance the mood of my goblin adjuncts? Was Jenus so confident that my adjucnts would not wish to harm him simply because I cared for him?

 

That was confidence indeed. What on earth could Jenus be thinking? A look towards the ffey king offered no clue, he was busy sprinkling salt, dipping his bread, face grave and pensive, as if he considered what move to make next, how to say what he had to say. How to make me accept it.

 

Jenus was rarely this quiet. Don't get me wrong, he was not a chatterbox either. He was not loud and boisterous by any stretch. He was a serious and responsible man, but usually we talked comfortably and long on those occasions we met face to face, and longer still over crystal or water connections.

 

I was outside the factions at his court, with my tainted blood, I could never be his rival for kingship, I could not join any political party, not his faction nor any opposition, so I was a sounding board for him. A neutral party, though I was not that in truth. I had my views. But I had no loyalties that would make me speak false, say what I didn't believe. That was what he looked for in me. Truth.

 

As I sat contemplating the possible reasons my cousin could have to come to me, the name of the ffey woman occurred to me suddenly. Lady rien du Fiene. She was daughter to a noble house, well connected and allied to my own house, the royal house that rejected me except behind closed doors.

 

A well known beauty, yet to be formally partnered, though there was a long line of those willing, and much in demand. I was not able to recall her given name, and I knew she was actually a dozen years older than myself, recognized as fully adult, though very young by ffey standards.

 

She was lushly pale, blonde, with eyes of pure, cobalt blue, alabaster skin, rosy cheeks, she had the beauty I did not, she was the fairytale noble I was not, she could have been my mother's daughter and welcomed into my family, as I was not. Her huge eyes were both frightened and excited, and made it clear she was not here entirely voluntarily, or if she had once been, was no longer. I tried to think of a reason for her to be here at all, and none plausible came to mind. What was Jenus up to?

 

I looked back at the part of the young man's face visible to me, his eyes, his slender, patrician nose, his lush, sculpted lips, no visible part of his face could be improved, he was simply perfect. He still looked familiar, but no name came to mind. The niggling conviction I should know who he was wouldn't go away. He returned my gaze with a wary one of his own, with eyes more sweetly feminine than my own, and yet unmistakeably male.

 

His eyes were incredible dark pools, nearly black in the shadow of his hood, only when compared to the eyes of Thae would one realize his gaze was not completely black. Though he hid his face, he was not as reluctant to be here as the woman, with him the veil was a habit, not a temporary affectation. I felt his curiosity, saw his eyes flicking around to everything in the vast room, soaking up every detail. If he had time and safety assured, I knew he would happily explore this small domain of mine, and not count it time wasted. I felt a stirring of interest. Who was he?

 

Kohl nodded greeting to Jenus, though it was stiff and unpracticed as he strained to control the urge to strike out, his attentions fixed on the two strangers with a predatory gleam. I sensed my adjuncts shifting the tiniest fraction. Suspicious by nature, they were gearing up for any threat the unknown two might suddenly offer.

 

They shouldn't be. With an adolescent male in the room they should not be telegraphing all this aggression. They should strive for calm. Thae had much less control than he needed not to react. Thae was nearest to Beyan, and the golden goblin was at least fairly calm. I hoped that if Thae was forced into acting that Beyan would have time to intervene.

 

I felt how badly my green/gray adjuncts wanted to act before any hostility was even offered. Tension rode the air. The ffey were barely larger than I, and I could think of nothing they could do to harm me, my adjuncts would take them out at the first excuse, put them on their backs, if not kill them. Perhaps they were magicians, but I felt no magic leaking out into the room. Ffey magic could be strong, but rarely so strong as goblin magic, never so strong as Fais' magic, for his magic was the magic fueled by all living things and the Earth itself, that of DanFii. Unless Jenus brought his most powerful sorcerers, it would be pure suicide to offer me a magical assault or insult.

 

Beyan's eyes were fixed on my hand where I held Jenus' as he laid the two additional plates I'd asked for in front of me. Even sweet Beyan did not like me to be touched by ffey even if the ffey in question was a relative of mine. His claws clicked against the plates. Thae was a few feet back, too still, watching the ffey as if they were edible prey. His beautiful mouth was tight, as if he only just managed not to bare teeth in a threat display.

 

I broke the remaining bread and poured more oil, placed salt where all three could reach it. The sharing of hand torn bread was a traditional welcome. I turned in my chair and held out bread to Thae, the one who worried me the most, and only to him. His hand was reluctant, but he took it, tasted it while I stared at him. His brilliant teeth tore into the bread with savage delicacy, and I turned back to our guests.

 

No knife was ever put to welcoming bread, to do so implied a threat, a severing of ties. To tear the bread allowed the ties to form in the direction of fate, and guided by the hands of the ghods, not forced by the blade. There were priests who specialized in the reading of the shapes the welcoming bread formed. I viewed that as complete foolishness, but they were popular with many who looked for omens.

 

Some will also share garlic and fresh herbs during welcome, but my goblin taste buds did not find most herbs friendly, and garlic made my adjuncts grimace, their very sensitive noses rebelling. Salt was good, and oil of the olive, and a grainy bread. Those things we all enjoyed. If I had had more warning I would have offered ripened fruits. The ffey offered meats to guests who visited their tables, but goblins were vegetarians, and our larder did not contain any to bring.

 

"Tell me this news, cousin. I want to hear it. Beyan, can you bring us tea?" I prompted after they all had filled their plates. I did not call Jenus king, I had not since I became semi "adult" in the eyes of the ffey by bonding to my adjuncts at age fourteen. It was Thae, not Beyan who turned and left the room, Beyan remained at the table, standing over all of us.

 

Jenus could not rule over a goblin, thus he could not be my king. I was part goblin. Goblins did not give the title of ruler to any who were not goblin. And by the same token, as I could not call Jenus by his title, nor could I call the goblin queen, Aaquaa, by hers. Yet, I liked her every bit as much as I did Jenus, and it was understood by all of us, that I meant no disrespect by my omission.

 

Of course I was not so foolish as to trust either one of them completely. I did take a perverse satisfaction in it at times, being outside the usual constraints of the two courts. Who else could walk into the throne room of either court and not be stopped? Jenus cleared his throat while I was daydreaming.

 

"Already thirty-one humankind have been slaughtered. The Butchers do not seem to be satiated or bored in the least. It seems they will continue until they are stopped. I believe they are enjoying this killing game, having fun. Not only are they killing humans, but also the closest things we have to sympathetic allies among the humankind, the vampires and the lycanthropes. I have sent others to speak to Kiernan and Eryrian. I have sent messages that I consider their actions unsanctioned, I have, as their kin, demanded they stop, return to my court, they have not. None of my messengers have returned, cousin. I fear my messengers dead, or imprisoned somehow. One does not lightly kill a king's messenger." Jenus said, and anxiety filled his austere face, anxiety and sorrow. No, one did not kill a king's messenger, not ever. Even to cause harm to one bought much trouble, but to kill more than one....

 

"You are certain of this?" Kohl asked, his expression still forbidding, but also concerned. Not even the goblins would kill a ffey king's messenger.

 

I am certain they would have contacted me if they lived and were able." Jenus said. They exchanged a charged look, a rare moment of accord, which I interrupted.

 

"You mean to send me next? How many have you sent before me?" I asked. It was logical, that Jenus would seek me out for this, goblins were hard to kill, though I wished to stay here among my bones and ghosts where I belonged. Not leave on some wild, if exciting chase for the ffey king. Yet...it was not only for him. If the Butchers managed to incite a war we all would pay. I had met humans, and I didn't like them much. I had also met vampires and lycanthropes. They felt...seemed...more interesting.

 

Beyan took the tea pot from Thae who had cradled it in a quilted cozy and handed it to me, preventing Thae from having to come nearer to our guests. Beyan agreed with me, then, Thae should be kept far from temptation.

 

I poured the cups of tea, drizzled each I passed to the ffey with flower honey, they liked their sweet drink, passed them out and sipped my own ginger and mint tea, unsweetened. I waited, because surely there was more to come. Something worse. Jenus would not have come here just to ask me to go to out among the humans. Why not call me to his court for that?

 

I didn't like the human world. It was loud and smelly and crowded, noxious with fumes that poisoned the air. There was no balance, little planning to include harmony in their construction of any city. It was hard to find spaces of true tranquility.

 

Most of the time I lived here, in the House of Records, seeing no one daily except my adjuncts. On occasion a supplicant came, begging me to raise a loved one so he could converse, or she could answer questions, but that was not all that often, no more than two or three times per week.

 

I lived for the most part, quite alone and apart from others within my little adjunct family, and was quite content. I did wonder if my warrior goblins wanted a more adventurous life. Probably the answer was yes. Probably I was the only one truly content living so serene a life. This place was surrounded by nothing but nature, far distant from any great collection of bipeds of any kind.

 

And I liked it that way.


	8. Part 8

  
Author's notes: Summary: A second reason, one that becomes a boon....  
  
A/N: Please I beg, read a few chapters before you decide if you like it or hate it....That said, suspend disbelief and let me tell you a story.....  


* * *

Out in the humankind's crazy world, there would be distractions, irritations and vast numbers of frantic people. But, for all my reluctance, I acknowledged I had obligations to my cousin, even if I did not call him king. If he asked for me to do him this service, I would do it.

 

"Three others went before you. I have not heard from any of them. I have no one else who I do not fear to send. You are the one name I hear over and over from my advisors. 'Send the half-goblin, they tell me'. "Lords Eryrian and Kiernan will not kill that one."." Jenus fixed me with his great eyes as he spoke. They brimmed with conflict, sincerity, yet...a darkness rode there as well.

 

Kohl hissed at Jenus, fearsome fangs flashing, and the ffey woman seated off to the side let out a tiny scream, shrinking back into her chair, gasping. Her hands covered her mouth as if she was holding in another scream, soft, pale hands, like succulent fruits, waiting to be lipped and tasted, wavering over her mouth. Her slippered feet were up on the edge of her chair, knees drawn in tight to her chest, childlike.

 

The young man, the ffey who had come with her and Jenus, reached out and grasped her arm through the folds of her cloak, holding her in her chair, or I am sure she would have run, bolted across the floor, in a room full or predators, supplying a tantalizing, fleeing target.

 

I could see nothing of his forearm, his robes were long, buttoned right down over his wrists and even his palms mostly hidden, but I was betting his fingers were digging into her soft, upper arm, hard.

 

If she had leapt to her feet, if she had run, one of my adjuncts, most likely Thae, would have reflexively slapped her to the floor, taking control of her movement, stopping her, crushing her, or worse. I did not trust Thae to be able to stop without giving greater harm. The young ffey man seemed to know this as clearly as the woman did not. He held her forcibly in her chair.

 

The man's long lashed eyes were hyper alert, a gleam far back under his hood, traveling from face to face, watching for danger, for an attack, one he seemed only to be waiting for. He did not move, sitting rigidly upright, hardly breathing.

 

I thought about lending him my support, about going to the woman, calming her, but, if she flinched too hard, if she screamed at my approaching her too near, if she raised her hands and I was close...how would I stop Kohl, Fais or Beyan from moving to protect me? If they thought I was in danger...Damn Jenus, why had he brought these others here? It was trouble, not an exciting kind, not a kind I needed.

 

The young man's face was taut, light brown, seemed well sculpted, was hard to look away from, though I now had plenty else to draw my attention. Not even the fragile beauty of the woman's face was more drawing to my eye. My attention needed to be on other things. I blinked and turned away from him. Not before I wondered who he would defend if I could not stop this. Would he defend her? Himself, or both? Or...imprudently, foolishly flee, hopeless as that would be?

 

Kohl was standing as I had known he would be, Fais tensed and ready next to him, though still in his chair, Beyan, with his great ivory and gold streaked arm around Thae, his fist knotted at the young one's waist, holding him high, up off the ground. Thae...ghods, he had gone for someone...and I hadn't seen it... Beyan had caught him.

 

I turned my face towards Jenus, my brows lowering forbiddingly, my arms going out, fingers, not claws, digging into Kohl's arm.

 

Jenus stared, drawing back a little, brow furrowed, setting down his steaming cup.

 

Then his cheeks flushed red when he realized how his words sounded to us, to me, to my goblins. His eyes grew wide and round as he pivoted around to face me.

 

"No, no, I mean only that you will not fail to succeed, Sam! I know you will not. I did not mean I would not care, would not feel loss if you were to disappear as the others.... You are precious to me, cousin. You know this." He reached out his hand to me again, across the old, wooden table. I didn't hesitate to take it. I felt rather than heard the movement of my adjuncts, tightening my grip on Jenus, as they crowded close, more threatening as they loomed.

 

I squeezed his hand as we sat, glaring a warning at Kohl. It was his job not to allow this situation to escalate.

 

"Do not worry, Jenus. I know what you meant." Well, I did now. "I also know it is difficult for you to come to me and ask. I will do this for you."

 

Instead of looking pleased, my cousin only looked more miserable than ever. I felt the frown furrow my brow.

 

"What?" I asked again. I sighed, now came the real reason he was here, in the House of Records, why I was not in a place he controlled.

 

This pattern of engagement, the court games were ingrained in him, natural to him as breathing. He couldn't not play them. Win a small victory first, set the pattern, then come in for the coup de grace. The victory that mattered most.

 

He wanted me to go on his diplomatic mission, have no doubt, but there was some other thing, some other concession he wanted even more.

 

"You are of royal blood, cousin-mine. It entitles you to four adjuncts. The goblins do not count among ffey reckonings." I heard the unconsciously dismissive tone. He meant what he said, to him, my goblins were as nothing when it came down to it.

 

"Theoretically you could have four goblin and four ffey. The wording of the law does not forbid it. You could ask for more adjuncts than any other noble alive today has. Think of the trouble that would cause! The jealousy."

 

He smiled tightly at the thought, liking it, I knew. I sighed, but he did not notice that. I for one despised the politics he lived to play. He plunged on. 

 

"You have only four adjuncts. All goblin. I need you to be my representative, as well as the representative of the goblins if you go for me to the humans. If you go, I will need you to take ffey adjuncts with you. As many as you will accept. I have brought two with me who do not object to your matching. If they do not serve, I will find others...." He made it clear to me, that he would find ones who would agree to join with me. I did not doubt him, looking in his piercing, determined gaze.

 

I was startled, but it all made a sick kind of sense when I considered it. At least to them, to Jenus. He would send his people with me, under my diplomatic immunity, so they might do his work, whatever it was. I had news for him. any adjunct who came my way was going to be mine first, second and always. I wasn't going to tell him that, let him find it out for himself. Did I want to be permanently burdened with my own collection of ffey adjuncts? I grimaced at the vision. No. I did not.

 

"Jenus, I hardly care if ffey object to anything I do. I do not love the courts, either one. The two great courts made my growing up hell. I do not think the ffey nobles would accept me as your representative unless you yourself became my adjunct or I yours."

My smile was more wintry than the last one I'd sent his way.

 

"We both know that is unlikely to happen. Unless that is why you are here. To offer yourself?" I was only half-kidding. There was no way I wished for it to be true, But I wasn't going to be surprised by anything. Having Jenus to husband? No, I decided, the idea definitely did not please me.

 

I released his hand gently, so he would know I was not angry with him, not yet. I was irritated that he thought he could require anything of me simply for it to look right to politicos. I didn't really want any more people around me. I was getting to know Thae, and that was proving no easy task. I did not need a newer source of stress.

 

"I am saying this all wrong. Sorry. Sam, I am nervous." The king tried again. He had picked up on my mood, read it correctly, and now was backpedaling, knowing he had failed to make his case.

 

"Please, I mean no insult. Do not forget the ffey part of yourself. It is as much a part of you as the goblin half. But, you have only goblin influences around you now. Your Kels. I think that needs to change. Whether others like it or not you are a royal and half ffey. When I searched to those I thought would be compatible, who would please you, I found Lady rein du Fiene and Lord A'avi. The Lady is open to being a companion to you, her family is highly placed, she would bring more credibility to you as my diplomatic representative."

 

I looked askance at her cowering form. Yeah, right. She looked highly credible now.

 

"No offense, cousin, but she does not seem suited to my company, or the company of those I already keep beside me. She seems a little...high strung even with my adjuncts on their best behavior, as you know well they are." I said hard, when I saw he was about to open his mouth and protest.

 

"It is not fair to ask it of her. What of him?" I pointed with my thumb to the man, letting the tip of one claw peek free. Ready to see what kind of lure Jenus had for me to accept the man. He kept his head low, hiding most of his face. I could see those luminous, hypnotic eyes, but little else. "Why did you pick him for me? What has he got to offer?"

 

Jenus sighed. Making it apparent he despaired of my blunt speech and the rudeness of my approach ever changing. Or perhaps he had hoped I would take the woman as well as the man. Instead of him? Unlikely. She was fertile, I could smell it's perfume on her. Ripe and ready to brim with life. Life I could not give her, life my adjuncts could not bring to fruition, and I would not bind her to me in a barren partnership. I had more pride than that.

 

I knew I would not take her. The idea of having her around me everyday, smelling of sweet life, of waiting children...as a part of my bond, it rankled. I would not have it. And I would not share my adjuncts with her, beautiful as she was. I felt impatient every time I looked at her. There was absolutely no way I was going to take her with me. I looked from goblin to goblin, trying to see if they were watching her, trying to read their thoughts in their neutral faces.

 

Jenus answered me then. And I heard the satisfaction in his voice. What ever he was going to say, he knew he had me. I had missed something important. "Lord A'avi is one of the court Keepers."

 

I sat, frozen, too wracked with surprise to speak for several minutes. He was young to my eye for such an arduous position, and that told me my eye lied. Then I smiled, a laugh escaping me. Jenus had caught me by surprise, offering me someone I actually wanted. Point for my cousin the king! This round had gone to him.

 

I stood and leaned across the table to the man. I held out my hand and moving with careful slowness he accepted it. Just his fingers touching mine, reluctant. I had the impression he was waiting for one of my goblin adjuncts to object, perhaps physically.

 

His hand was fine boned, delicate for a man's, long fingered, square palmed, worthy of any artist's rendering. Of course, I was already comparing him to my great Kel-goblins. I spoke over my shoulder to Jenus.

 

This one, I will take if he is willing." I told Jenus, not missing the flood of astonishment that filled the ffey man's face as I held on to his fingers. Well, he at least was surprised.

 

I was happy with my new prize.


	9. Part 9

A court Keeper is sort of a peacekeeper, burdened with finding ways to maintain the peace and honor in the fractious ffey court. They were part jester, part diplomat, part soldier, part judge. I never understood why highborn nobles accepted such positions. They were yelled at, threatened, screamed at, abused and ridiculed, all for the pleasure of solving the problems for spoiled ffey men and women.

 

What the Keepers did have was the authority to compel their decisions be accepted as final. Once written into the logs of the court, the rulings could not be contested. In petty revenge the court nobles treated the Keepers as lower class, and unworthy of notice or intermarriage.

 

I saw my quick offer had shocked Jenus. He struggled to recover. Clearly he had believe there would be hours more negotiation, give and take, bargaining. Time to present his case, and the reasons for his actions, his plans.

 

What he didn't remember was the Keepers had saved my life at the ffey courts, more than once. They were not as outcast as I, but I knew they understood my position better than any others residing at the courts. I for one didn't minimize their contribution, or deny them respect. There had to be something special about this young man in order for the Keepers to have taken him in so young.

 

"Very well I had hoped...You are sure you won't accept the Lady as well? She has the position to aid you. Her family name would go far in giving you legitimacy in the eyes of the more conservative families. It is an advantageous match." His voice was hopeful, but resigned. He knew me well enough to know I wouldn't change my mind.

 

"I have nothing to offer her. I do not need what she brings. No. I will not take her as mine." I shook my head decisively no. Absolutely not. Jenus gathered himself and continued.

 

"I will need you to go first to the vampire who resides in the Catacombs. His name is Alexander." Jenus told me. "Stay with him. Until he is reassured of the veracity of our word. Our treaty with him and his people has been called into question by the actions of the rogue ffey. The Butchers have killed some of his followers, some humans protected my him. I need you to stay as guarantee of my word and will. I need you to secure our treaty."

 

He needed me as flesh and blood hostage to his promise.

 

Hmmm. That was more than I wished to do. To stay after my task with the Butchers was done. I had not planned to wait any great time, nor to try and talk them out of what they were doing. They were madmen. I had planned to kill them and be done with it if they gave me any speech about honor killing and the like. The only way they would survive an encounter with me, now that I was no longer a weakling child, was to fall on their knees and obey.

 

But, Jenus wanted more than that, more than the defeat of the Butchers. And I had all but given him my word. Prematurely. How could I refuse him now?

 

Jenus had not asked for my service for a while now. He had never asked for me to do one of this magnitude for him or for the court. The small favors, carrying messages to the goblin queen, didn't count. He had instead done past service for me.

 

It was his doing, in response to the Keeper's prompting, that had me named as Historian while still a child. And recognized as royal so I did not owe allegiance and fealty to any other. In effect it was his doing that I was not a highborn slave, bound to serve one of the Pure who hated me. I owed much to him for that.

 

I nodded once, sharply and refocused on him.

 

"I will do this for you, cousin. I assume you wish it done immediately?" The mint in my tea cooled my tongue even as the heat of the ginger warmed me. Steam curled up from the cup, wetting my cheek. I had no honey in my tea, sweetness was cloying to goblins. And I, half goblin as I was, seemed to be all goblin in my preference of taste.

 

There was a bright spot in staying at the Catacombs where this Alexander resided. The Catacombs were the repositories of the humankind's dead. If the stay was long enough, I could explore the tombs. I had never raised a human ghost. I did not know if it was possible. Some said only like can raise like. Perhaps I could only call goblin and ffey. Perhaps I would find out if that were true or merely old superstitious legend. After all, I had felt the pull of Demon dead already, seen their shades walking, even if I had not called them.

 

"I have no other choice. I would not send you if I had others to send. I don't enjoy risking you. Thank you, Sam." Jenus reached out and squeezed my hand again.

 

A'avi next to Jenus shifted in his seat, setting his cup down with elaborate care. The delicate china clanked. But the slender young ffey said nothing. His face flushed, I saw his jaw clench, and his eyes were downcast. His had formed a tight fist, knuckles gone white. I waited longer, giving him time to speak, but he did not. His eyes were fixed on the table's surface.

 

I will take my adjuncts, the new and the old." I stated after the pause. Speaking to Jenus. "I will not leave them behind though the mark me as goblin and though the humans fear them The vampire must agree to this. I must have the right to my own if I stay with him."

 

"Yes, I knew you would insist on it. I have no objection. I have sent Alexander word that it is the custom to do so among the goblins. He is not happy about having goblin warriors within his walls. But he did finally agree. I want you to be safe. They can keep you so. As much as I do not want war, I do not trust the humans, Sam. They are not constant in their agreements, they are mercurial, the meaning of the words always changing." He frowned.

 

The word of a ffey was his or her bond. It must not be broken or twisted. I was not reassuring that I could not count on it being the same among the humankind. How could I treat with people who did not honor their given word? I sat thinking about that while no one spoke. The Jenus cleared his throat, his voice tighter when he spoke next.

 

"I have only one request. Listen to me, please before you decide. I would not bring it up if I thought it was not crucial. Don't take the boy with you." Jenus added a second later. I frowned at him. I looked at Kohl, saw a face set in stone, with eyes that glittered menace.

 

"He is not well controlled." Jenus stated the truth to me. But I would not leave him behind even so. Thae was mine, I would never abandon him because he was difficult to control, or because others felt he was trouble. I myself knew what being abandoned felt like, no adjunct of mine would ever feel that pain. I shook my head.

 

"Sorry, Thae goes with us. He is mine. We will take care of him." If I had even considered agreeing to leaving Thae behind the look on Kohl's face would have changed my mind. Kohl was not about to do anything like that. As much as I was the named patron here, when it came to many things, and one of those was Thae, Kohl made the decisions.

 

"He has not undergone the Change. He will be stressed out in the unknown world, have trouble coping. He may act out, cause harm to another, a human, or their descendants. It is not wise to take him. " Jenus reminded me. I nodded to let him know I recognized the risk, I did not merely mean to dismiss it out of hand.

 

"He is ours, we are his, he goes, or none of us go. His behavior is our concern, not the concern of an outsider." I told Jenus firmly, giving no stress to the word outsider. But I saw the message win through.

 

Jenus might be my family, my cousin and my blood, but Thae was my adjunct, and even if I had a close family, Thae would still come before them. His position with me, in the goblin view of things, was inviolate. Jenus was not a goblin, and maybe he couldn't understand that.

 

"He is seventeen, only two years younger than I. I worked as Historian at his age. I still have not completed the Change, do you forget that, cousin? He can do this." I reminded Jenus. He shrugged.

 

"You are not pure goblin, Sam. Your Change is likely muted by your ffey heritage. You may not finish the Change, or it may not be the same as his will be, a full blooded goblin." Jenus told me in return, making what points he could.

 

"True enough. But it is likely he has a full year or more before he begins his Change. We will be back here and safe before then. Do not trouble yourself." And though I saw that Jenus was clearly frustrated, that was the end of that.

 

Even if I had thought it was wise to exclude Thae, my youngest adjunct, which I did not, he would need us around him when the Change came. Kohl would have brought Thae with us against any edict issued. To fight with Kohl over Thae, it was the height of foolishness. A fight I could not win.

 

"I would that I could go with you." Lady Fiene whispered tentatively, the first words I heard her utter. Her hands drifted down from her face now, came to rest clasped against her stomach, her feet on the floor. I stared at her. Her deep, blue eyes glowing, intent, glistening with longing as she gazed on me. So beautiful. Her gaze bored into me.

 

I realized with shock that she was attracted to me, in a physical/sexual way, and that she was one of the ones I had heard rumor of, one who wanted to break the choke-hold of tradition held on the ffey courts.

 

Some few of the ffey had elevated us who were not Pure to the status of icons. I was called The Heretic by them, in tones not filled with the loathing that I was used to hearing from other ffey. I was the only goblin-ffey, but there were ffey-demi-ffey, ffey-human, and ffey-demon mixes, all tolerated, a few welcomed, all more accepted than I, but still not Pure.

 

Realizing who she was, and how she felt, I knew the choice I made was right. She would not serve me as my adjunct. She would have an agenda separate from mine, something else to prove. She, one of the Pure, one of the desired, would be seen to sacrifice herself to me, the ultimate of the UnPure. She would enter my bed, whether I bid her or no. A sexual sacrifice to her beliefs. There were others aplenty who would exploit her in that way, let her go to them.

 

"I have been forbidden to go with you if you don't select me. Won't you please take me?" She murmured, turning on her charm like a secret breeze in the room. Her skin seemed to glow, her eyes, her throat, her body offering blissful things.

 

I listened to the soft voice, rapt, and she smiled at me, a slow smile filled with promise, her scent filled with the potential of children, children for me, for us... I ached at the scent, my body rising unexpectedly to that promise. It had happened a few times, the hardening of my member, but not often. I was not yet fully adult, fully functional as a male.

 

Yet, I wanted her. The ffey blood in me rose to her temptation as it had never risen any other time. She was seducing me. Her voice like golden honey flowing over my body, exciting as it raced to my loins. I wanted her more, the life she could bear, more than all else. I burned to have her. I let out a sound of want, tiny and against my will.

 

I reached out my hand. and encountered the hand of my prime adjunct. Kohl's grip tightening on me, a vice that drove me back to Earth to myself, my own will. I felt a rush of undiluted rage, and he held me against it, held me back from striking out at her. I shook off her spell. Took a deep breath, filled my lungs with the smell of goblins, of Kohl, and Fais right behind him, tail wrapped hard around my churning belly.

 

My adjuncts, ones I had chosen to bond to. I fought to keep from yelling at her, slapping her, reviling her for her overy act to bend me to her desires. My eyes held no warmth as I turned to her. And she drew back from me, seeing she had failed.

 

"I can not take you." I said, bland, Kohl's hand in mine, squeezing hard. "I have made a single offer today, to this man, A'avi, and I will not be forsworn." I said, and saw not resentment I her eyes, that which I had expected, but worship. She thought better of me for refusing her. I failed to grasp her logic, but it was better than facing her hatred.

 

I was using Lord A'avi, using him as an excuse to keep her from me, with her powers of seduction. Hoping she would not point out Jenus was willing for me to take them both. I knew I didn't want her. I didn't want to come through my Change, the inklings of which she had stirred in my belly, and fly to her bed. For in her bed, I was not the one who would have the control. I would be her minion there.

 

She sat higher in her chair, her face shining bright, squaring her shoulders. I saw in her gaze a worshipful zeal, a fanaticism as she smiled at me. I had somehow further elevated myself in her eyes. Yikes. I had hoped for neutral at best, threats at worse. It was what I had always known, what had always been my lot to receive.

 

"I understand," she said. "You are an honorable man. I will do nothing to compromise that." Her voice shook, filled with emotion and a tone that made me once again want to lean in to her, to scent her, to embrace her with my virgin body. Every cell screamed at me to obey the drive of nature, every cell promised me children to hold, squalling, wonderful life to raise to the eyes of the sun ghod, to dip into the verdant soil of the Earth, to cry up to DanFii for his blessings.

 

Even so, as I fought to choke down those feelings, I was betting she was more than a little relieved I had refused her. She was not a ffey woman for nothing, and to contemplate living among goblins day in and day out... Her attempted seduction was more for show, I thought, than true effort. Thanks to all the ghods. How might I have withstood her full power, if she had wanted me with all her being, I did not know.


	10. Part 10

  
Author's notes: Another unknown.  


* * *

"So," I said, smiling around the room, and coming back at last to smile at Lady Fiene. "I stay out of politics, both goblin and ffey. There are enough reasons to kill me, without adding political ones. I think it is politics that forbids you to go. I am glad to hear you want to go, even if you can not." Nothing was of course further from the truth. I was lying to her. I did not want her to come with me, with mine. Her attempted seduction was not something I was going to forget nor forgive.

 

So, I meant it not at all, but why leave enemies behind when it can be avoided? You see, I have mellowed with age. It was a view point I had come on only recently. In the past enemies seemed unimportant, inevitable. I was learning, slowly, it was not necessarily so.

 

"I do wish I could help in some way. The Butchers need to be caught and eliminated. Who cares if their blood is noble blood, if it has turned to rot in their veins? They should not be permitted to pass it on, to defile us. The court should have agreed to let the humans try them for their crimes, the genocide of our descendants. The humans will chose a fit punishment." Lady Fiene raised her voice, color flushed her cheeks.

 

Jenus stirred uncomfortably at the sound, the stridor of her zeal. What had he been thinking to bring her to me? What impression would she have made on the humankind? Was it a test he was giving me? To see if I had lost my mind, my perspective? That I would take such an openly homicidal ffey into human lands in pursuit of two mass killers? Making it abundantly clear that all ffey were murderous...

 

Lord A'avi stared at her as if he did not know her. His smooth cheeks were flushed, too.

 

"That will not happen," A'avi told her, his tenor voice tight, scoffing, his red/black eyes blazing. Indignant. His spilled tea was spreading on the polished tabletop.

 

I moved the closest Records further away, though they were in no danger, and sopped the liquid with the frayed end of my shoulder scarf. Kohl took it from my hand, unwound it and removed it from me, so it would not wet my skin. He tossed it over the small pool of tea. The fabric fell into a glowing heap, liquid slowly darkening it.

 

I was left bare chested in front of our ffey visitors. The lady stared at me and blushed, her eye darting down the line of my many nipples. Though she had not when noting my great Kels barely clothed, her eyes had not followed the gentle swell of their mammary lines.

 

Her eyes flicked away from me, then back, then away and back, over and over. The ffey man kept his eyes fixed on his folded hands, he, destined to be my adjunct, had not looked at me at all. And indeed had spent a lot of energy not to look my way. Hmmm.

 

Jenus winced at the tone of his proffered diplomat, the one he had offered me to represent the ffey, who had sounded very little like a Keeper just now. Jenus at least had no problem with my partial nudity, he was used to it by now, and ignored it effortlessly, ignored the obvious signs of my goblin blood. He spoke to the ffey man.

 

"The council voted, A'avi. They will not approve any action that will allow noble ffey to be executed without a hearing before the full court. In person. Your dedication is admirable, but you will have to control it and yourself. Sam is my representative, not my vengeance sent after them." Jenus stated.

 

Oh, I thought, really? And was I supposed to risk myself to what degree to bring back the ffey killers?

 

"Then let those who seek to send him go risk their own skins, not Smamacacsa. The ffey royals will not acknowledge his position among themselves. But he is good enough to send out on a hopeless mission so they will not have to go." A'avi spat out, the hood of his cloak falling back in his agitation. His cheeks were dark, livid with outrage.

 

This time A'avi was too preoccupied with his emotions to notice and pull his hood back into place. His face, now fully revealed, easily the most beautiful I had ever beheld, was contorted, twisted with rage, his glare sparking with fury. And still he was beautiful. His golden tan skin, his long, long blue-black hair, thick and shining, woven through with golden strands, knotted at the nape of his neck, the heavy mass clearly very long, thick. The perfect, kissable shape of his mouth, the flawless line of cheekbone and jaw, pure artistry, even drawn up in a snarl.

 

He was in fact, too beautiful, one could be lost in looking at him, miss what he said, miss his sharp and clever mind. Succumb to distraction and so pay a high price. He was so conspicuous he would be the perfect spy.

 

My skin held the faint marking of goblin marbling shining in pale green, bronze, ivory, and soft gold. But my skin, while it did glow in pleasure or in anger at times, was not near so radiant as Lord A'avi's. 

 

Now, Lord A'avi glowed, emotion turning him into a shining being, drawing every eye, every head turning toward him. His long locks of magnificent hair began to work loose from their metallic cords and blow free, crackling with static. The tips lit with tiny, electric flashes. Again the Lady Fiene shrank back against the chair and this time stared at him, not at us. Stared at him as if she expected, and feared this happening.

 

I stood, pushing back my chair and walked around the table to A'avi's side. He looked at me warily as I neared, uncertain. Bending down, I lifted his startled face, fingers cupping under his chin and kissed his mouth, stroked his cheek, reveling in the feel of his face under my fingers, his skin so warm, and soft as silk.

 

Surprise wiped the last traces of outrage from his expression. His lips opened a fraction under mine and I almost cried out at that. His eyes were huge, dark as deep pools of blood rubies.

 

A'avi's hands seized my wrists, but only held me, did not try to thrust me aside. He was no so much older than I, so close up, I saw it now the injured innocence of him, and I felt it was my place to offer him comfort. I shared my breath with him, breathed his into my own lungs.

 

He stared at me, lips parted, so I saw the soft pink-ness of his tongue, how his lips changed from the silken rose to a moist, darker shade of the same inside. His teeth were so white they shone, small and regular, except for his dainty, sharp, upper fangs, mere decoration, not weapons. Unlike a goblin, the ffey had no lower fangs.

 

I felt large hands come to rest on my shoulders. Kohl, I knew without turning, steady and strong, a long line of hard heat. Come to rescue me from myself. Almost worth a smile, I shivered instead, caught up in what I was doing, what I suddenly desired. I felt Kohl stiffen against my back, the rumble of his growl below the level of conscious hearing, but all in the room felt it vibrate in their bodies.

 

Kohl feared A'avi, feared this scene now unfolding. I felt his trepidation, and his displeasure with that unprecedented beauty no exposed. He sensed how my pulse had sped to thundering when I touch the ffey man, he could hear every beat of my treacherous heart, smell every pheromone I released. Pheromones I had not released for him, my first adjunct.

 

I could try to explain to him how I felt, how I sought to keep things under control, but how I had felt I had to touch this one, I had no choice but to caress the fine skin, and trace the edge of his lush lips with finger tips and tongue. Kohl and the others wouldn't believe I was doing the right thing by touching A'avi, or any ffey. I did not know if I could make it right with them.

 

When I did not immediately draw back, Kohl's hand turned into a fist, knotting in my hair. I felt the muscles of his forearms swell as he lifted me as if I weighed less than air, his arm stealing around my torso, locking there like a steel band. Expelling the breath from my lungs.

 

I let Kohl pull me back, I let him, but only just. I wanted to stay close to A'avi. I wanted to touch him again. But I went back, leaning against the large, familiar body as he pulled me, his claws extended just enough to prick my skin.

 

As I moved away, hands trailing along his skin A'avi lifted his face and looked into my eyes, our gazes locked tight. He was angry once more, very angry, and he had nowhere to direct it. His long lashed, stunning eyes rose from mine to the eyes of my prime adjunct, red bleeding across the darkness until they were nearly crimson fire. His lips peeled back from bared fangs that no longer looked so cute.

 

Rage blazed, feeding on both of them, escalating as it jumped from one to the other and back again. Slowly, A'avi began to stand, so small next to Kohl, but somehow nearly as frightening, the power vibrating around the three of us, spreading, I by far the weakest of us.

 

Dread stabbed into my chest freezing into a solid fist sized lump. I was wrong, this one had magic, powerful frightening magic. Kohl's arm began to loosen, shifting around me to force me behind him. I resisted with all my might. If Fais responded in kind, the magic, his and the ffey's would tear this place, and all of us apart, unless Kohl managed to kill A'avi first.

 

Jenus stood hand outstretched and that drew Beyan in behind him, silent as a true ghost, one long arm going around his upper torso and throat, the other grabbing his extended arm and forcing it in a direction away from us pretty gently, but I still saw Jenus wince as Beyan's fist squeezed.

 

Fais moved, slipping closer to the cringing Lady Fiene, who was very, very still, afraid to be caught in something that was not her talent, something too physical was about to explode here, and she was a afraid to be party to it. I tasted that fear like a fine, sweet wine on my tongue. The air around Fais began to sparkle, charged with his goblin magic, shimmering until it was hard to see him at all.

 

Kohl and A'avi were about to start something very bad. I raised my voice before the macho posturing could go any further, before the ffey man's temper let loose, before serious fighting began. I spread my arms wide, drawing every eye with my dramatics. My own claws gleamed pearl white, fully extended. I had very impressive claws, even for a goblin.

 

"You will not raise hand nor magic to each other. Not in my company. I will not tolerate it. Not from any one of you. You are my adjuncts, each of you. He," I pointed one hooked talon at A'avi. "He as much as any other is mine. You will welcome him, succor him, and bind to him as mine."

 

My voice was as icy as the hard, forboding lump in my chest, so much deeper than normal, carrying out into the room like it never had before. Cold and unflinching. An order. The first such that I had given in such a voice. The voice I would one day have, when I was fully adult, fully a man. I could not afford to lose this argument, they must take me seriously. Beyan and Fais suddenly switched their attention from Kohl to me. I saw nothing on Fais' face hidden behind the light show, but Beyan's was shocked.

 

A flitting movement in a door, I saw the sunset colors of Thae, and put out on e of my hands towards him. He froze, the feral light in his black eyes undimmed, but he still froze at my bidding. Deadly adolescent, intent on the hunt, waiting for something to break the impasse, now held by my will.

 

I felt Kohl become immobile against my back, the subtle adjustment in preparation to strike ceasing. His claws slowly withdrawing. A'avi lost his hold on Kohl's eyes and looked at me. I felt his trembling, a combination of fear and of rage still. His eyes were melting back to blackness, while I watched. He hadn't wanted to fight, he just had had no idea what else to do. His chest heaved with his breath underneath the thick robes the ffey preferred. I lowered my arms, letting my own claws disappear back into their sheaths.

 

I was exhausted, but it was too early to rest, too soon. I stepped forward, Kohl's hands falling away, claws retracted, and embraced the ffey who would join me. Wrapping him completely in my arms, holding him, shuddering with him, with the sensation of having him against me. My fingers wove into his hair, hair like yards and yards of living, writhing silk.

 

I was tired and hungry. Unbearably hungry. A'avi's hair surrounded me, tangling with my own coarser, charcoal grey strands. I heard him draw a sharp breath. His long cloak and the robes underneath hid most of the shape of his body from me but I could tell he was slender, broader of shoulder than I, no where near as thickly muscled, but my height exactly, I had thought he was taller. I yearned to feel his skin bare against my own, feel it yielding under my fangs.

 

"It will be alright." I said to him, partly to convince myself, alarmed by the way I was acting and feeling. I bit down on my own tongue until it bled, two neat fang marks welling blood, then lifting my mouth to meet his. He startled at that, shying away, almost out of my hold, his hands pushing at my ribs, below my chest, squirming, scrabbling for a secure hold to push me away, trying to get free, not trying to harm me.

 

Only goblins offered blood during binding and among goblins only the adult males. Only adult males had fangs, it was a blatant statement that I should not have been capable of making. I had startled the ffey man. I held him tightly to me, not letting him move away. Determined to have his submission if not his full consent.

 

My mouth resting patiently on his, the scent of my blood in the air, my body screaming for him to take it. I waited for his acceptance. I could not imagine his refusal. His small fangs proved he was capable of drinking blood. Kohl made a sound, but it slipped away from my hearing. I saw and felt only A'avi, only the one I had yet to have a claim on. And the claim was all.

 

Then, before I could be driven to the edge of my control, A'avi stopped struggling. I felt him sigh and with aching slowness he parted his lips, opening his mouth to me, and my blood, my claim flowed into him. Into his mouth. He swallowed, his tongue flicking out to touch mine, to dance with mine. I sensed him shiver, the ecstasy rippling through him, his breath short and fast. He made a sound that tore through me, like hot metal down every nerve, into the core of my body.

 

I was instantly aroused, hungry, needy, every fiber of my being filled with longing, I knew he could feel me, my body, the points of all of my nipples, even the sluggish rise of my quiessent cock. I battled for composure as he melted against me, I fought not to rip at him, at his throat, feast on his splashing blood. My fingers ghosted over his cheek, claws retracted painfully hard.

 

What had Jenus done? Who had he brought to me, and why? A Lady who was capable of seducing me, of giving me visions of children and a future with them in it. A Lord who could fire my body prematurely? And I, thinking myself clever, had accepted one. The male, the one who I had seen rise up and challenge my Kels. Threaten Kohl, my first adjunct, without showing fear.

 

I knew far too little of him. Just that he was a ffey with a beautiful face. And stupendous magicks. I didn't know him well enough to bring him into my house, to bring him to rest at my hearth, in my birth soil. Yet I was doing it. I was risking all for him. A ffey who tingled my bones.

 

He was mine. Offering me something I could not quite sense, but refused to give up. I would have him, as my adjunct, bound to me. And I would find out what it was he had, hidden within himself, the thing I did not yet understand, that I barely sensed, the thing that I wanted so badly.


	11. Part 11

  
Author's notes: Positioning, and betrayal.  


* * *

I heard sounds, felt air whip across my bared back, felt the floor shake with the impact of bodies slamming down. But I couldn't look, not now.

 

This was not a good time for me to be dealing with ffey visitors, especially one that could stir and arouse me like this one. The hormonal turmoil I was beginning to suffer was bad enough without more reasons to burn. I was losing control more often lately, little things, little gaffes, ones I had not thought about before, that wouldn't have bothered me last year at all. Ones that put all together meant I was nearing my time, my Change inch by slow, inconvenient inch it was coming.

 

I was thinking of physical things that hadn't occupied my mind much in the past. Not fighting and martial arts. Not sword fighting and grappling. I was thinking...of mating. I caught myself more than once in an erotic daydream of my adjuncts. Watching them spar was exciting, it always had been but now...it was so in a new way.

 

I still kissed them when I woke, and when we went to sleep burrowed in soil or wrapped in cloth, in innocence I kissed them. But that innocence was evolving. The friendly kisses were no longer all I thought of, all I desired. I had not figured out a way to tell anyone my morphing thoughts. I had seen Beyan sniffing the air around me once or twice lately, an odd expression on his face. Now, here, I was being outed, unpleasantly and close to publicly, to all my goblins, outed by my reaction to this ffey. For they could not fail to see it.

 

I closed my eyes for a moment's respite, disappointed at my cowardice. I opened them again and looked into the unbelieving gaze of my goblin priest, Fais. I had to look away. I saw Thae on the floor, curled over, up to the hips and elbows in the Earth, Kohl bent over him, holding him there. I knew then that the wind I had felt at my back had been Thae going for me, slashing at me with his adolescent claws extended. Not good. But my mind shied away from that problem and to the next. To the one I held right up against my body. Lord A'avi. My ffey adjunct.

 

This was the first time I offered him or any ffey my blood. There is no more intimate gift. His long, slender fingers threaded through my hair, trembling against my scalp, holding on. I lowered my hand from his face to his throat, he swallowed, his Adam's apple pushing up and down along my palm. I knew he savored my gift. I knew I was binding him to me, Knew he knew it as well, and that he accepted whatever it meant, though it scared him. To me it meant he was mine. And some day, I would have him completely, body, blood, heart and mind. Someday my blood would be as a rope between us tying one to the other.

 

I was to leave my place of sanctuary. If fate was against me, I might not return except as dry bones to reside in the crypts below, bones for a future Historian to caress and call my ghost. To inquire of me my life's history in my own thoughts and words and deeds. To discover from my dead lips how my end had come upon me.

 

I wanted to waste no time in binding my newest adjunct to me, to binding A'avi to all of us. I could not risk delay. I had to ask, to request my goblins to take him into our fold, to embrace him, and I had to hope they would agree. That the fury they had looked on him with would not make them refuse me. Refuse him.

 

A'avi raised his head up from mine, eyes gone darker, liquid, tears shivering on the edges of his impossible fringe of lashes. He licked the last of my blood from his lips in long, languid strokes, his tongue soft looking, and delicately colored. I shivered to watch him, my nipples hardened all down my chest, one ripple of sensations traveling down. Both my hands snapped up to cup his face, but moving on restless, sinking into his loosened hair, dragging his face back into contact with mine, his lips, swollen with the earlier kisses, back to mine. I kissed him, hard, yet careful.

 

"I don't want this for you." A'avi whispered along my cheek and into my hair, his hot tears staining my cheek, his murmured words stopped my hands from dropping to further explore his hidden body as he continued. "You have given me blood, though I have come here and am part of the conspiracy to send you out and away, into the cursed world of the others. They don't want you here to....."

 

"Silence!" Jenus roared at him, taking an abbreviated step forward, Beyan's arm jerking him up short, choking him and his words off. It showed how furious he was that he was driven to shout, how much he wanted the words to stop that he actually struggled and fought Beyan's grasp, his unbreakable grip. He finally managed to say more. "Your king orders you to be silent! Go with him, go with my cousin, serve him. That is your place. You know nothing, you do not understand the implications... Listen to your king. I forbid you to speak on this!"

 

We stood silent, then. All of us, looking over at him, the ffey king, my cousin...who had just all but been accused of joining a conspiracy against me. A coalition who's intent was to send me from the ffey and goblin courts. Permanently? Could it be? That they would dare send the first Historian the ghods had gifted the courts with in many years, out and away? Would they risk the ghods wrath just to expel me?

 

I stared at Jenus, the betrayal sharp in my eyes as I did. He went still.

 

Thae's reflexive jerk at the yell raised Kohl a foot into the air. All of us, ffey and goblin noticed that. Thae was not going to be just one of the common Kels when he changed. He was going to be...more. A mere adolescent should not be able to move an adult Kel. A'avi gulped and shut his mouth, hiding his face in my shoulder. His anguish was scenting the air, he lifted his eyes, and wordless we stared into the depths of each other's eyes.

 

It did not surprise me that A'avi felt responsible for my being sent away. King Jenus would have consulted his council on who next to send out. And A'avi, one who Jenus picked for my adjunct, and a Keeper besides, would have remembered my name, been aware of my gifts. Maybe it had been he who first mentioned my name. So A'avi took the responsibility, the guilt on as his own. It was his fault. No matter how untrue, he believed it.

 

Yet..... Jenus, oh Jenus, he had years, decades, and centuries on me to learn his manipulations. He didn't hate me. But, I was not good for his rule. He would not have been blind to the advantages of me leaving. I turned to look at him. His face flushed, ashamed, angry, worried.

 

"Is it worth the ghod's vengeance?" I asked, quietly. For I was the ghod's gift. His expression was pained, showing a guttered fear, but his gaze did not flinch. He said nothing.

 

"Why could you not just say it to me, cousin mine?" I asked him. When had I ever given him the impression I could not take the blatant truth?

 

"Sam..." he began a last, but I turned back to A'avi. I held him a while longer, reluctant to let him go. In the periphery of my vision I saw Jenus and the dreamy, worshiping gaze of the Lady, so solemn, so strange, so fanatical, devout? Jenus' own gaze far different, fierce, hard, tinged with something I'd never seen in them. Regret. I felt he meant me no harm. Was I being foolish? I wanted badly, so badly to forgive him.

 

I didn't need to look for my goblin adjuncts to know where they were and how they felt about what I had just done, or about the exchange between Jenus and A'avi. If I had been all goblin, I would not have done it, would not have thought of it, sharing blood with a ffey. Though....my parents had thought of it, and both of them pure, they had shared body and blood and more to make me. Maybe I had in my blood from both sides some genetic defect that made me do this.

 

I set A'avi back from me, but I did not let him go entirely. My hands gripped his arms through his robes. He was not a mere stripling. I felt his biceps, two smooth curves, filling my palms full. So he wasn't huge, but not so small, either. I forced myself to turn and speak to Jenus and the ffey woman. For the time had come for them to leave, or I myself would rend them. And if I felt such a lack of control, I with my mixed blood, it was a wonder that the goblins around me had not killed both.

 

"You must go now, Jenus, Lady. There are things I must do before I go, things I must set in order as this House will be empty soon." I saw both flinch at that frankness. It was true, I knew it. Unless I returned there would be no Historian here, none for ffey or for goblin, for a very long time. The ghods were not pleased. No gift from the ghods should be rejected so openly, not even one as tainted as I. There would be... consequences for it.

 

"You must go." I said again. Soon, very soon you will not be safe here any longer." Here in the House of the Records, neutral ground. They would die here, in moments, if they did not flee now. I held my breath.

 

I almost laughed at how calm I sounded. I didn't want them to know what was going to happen to A'avi or to me after they left. I was going to pay the price for sharing blood with him. Kohl, Fais, Thae and Beyan had right to my blood. I had not asked them if I might offer it up to another. Or if they agreed to my taking another adjunct of another race. It was a serious breach of our bond for me to do what I had done. But the ffey didn't know that, that rule was pure goblin, the vengeance would be pure goblin. The rest of the day and night was going to be long as I reaped the rewards of my actions.


	12. Part 12

  
Author's notes: Paying for it.  


* * *

Kohl waited until Jenus and Lady rein du Fiene were up the outer stairs and out of sight. Then he rose to his feet, turned to me, his face flashing from neutral to undiluted fury, his water-clear grey eyes blazing. If his hair had been free it would have billowed around him like a storm, augmenting his threat, telegraphing it's warning. As it was, his braid lashed back and forth in time with his tail. His eyes were narrowed into slits, Beyan slipped in behind him to help Thae.

 

"How dare you?" Kohl asked me as I stood defiantly next to the table, not giving in to the impulse to cross my arms protectively over my chest. Or to run. I was tired already. I wished I could reach out and grab Kohl's hand, hug him, have him hug me, hold me, ask him what he thought was happening, what intrigue was rising in the courts that affected us, that demanded I be sent out.

 

I wanted to ask why I couldn't control myself around them, around A'avi, though I knew the answer to that, but I wanted him, I wanted my prime adjunct, my first in all past and future ways, to tell me. But, he didn't trust himself so close to me right now, he didn't come to me, though my eyes begged him to. No matter how hard I wished, silently that he would.

 

Fais stood next to Kohl, and his face was also mightily displeased, his chin lifted as he looked down at me. Tall and disapproving. I sighed. Beyan sat on the floor next to Thae as if his bones had turned to water and he could not stand, dropping his head into his hands. Thae stayed where he was, half-buried, his face turned from me, shuddering.

 

A'avi took a step back once he saw the expression on Kohl's face. He bumped in to the edge of the table hard, and stopped, his fingers gripped the smooth wood to either side of his slender body, his stance was wide, well balanced, as if he prepared to move in whichever direction he must. I inched a step further in front of him. The error was mine, not his, he would not pay for what I had done.

 

"What is happening?" A'avi asked, voice quiet, wary, asking a question I wanted to ask, but about something entirely different. He was careful not to provoke any undesired reaction with a shrill, fearful tone, or a sudden move. Fais glared at the young man. His gaze burned silver, with the blatant desire to attack, and to demand answers, apologies, explanations, with the desire also to take his anger out by having a good, bloody fight. But at least he had called back his magic.

 

"The selection process for adjuncts among the goblins is different from that of the ffey." I answered his question, later perhaps he would answer mine, if only for courtesy returned. I hoped. I sounded exhausted, even to myself.

 

Kohl frowned at me, concern starting to replace his righteous anger.

 

"If Jenus was goblin he never would have dared to approach me with you, or the Lady. He would have known to go to Kohl first. I, too should have asked before I took you, and especially before I tasted blood with you. It was my failing. The blood makes it done. I can not take it back." I said this loud enough for all to hear, and hoped it would begin my apology. I knew it had been wrong. I was sorry. But...it was done. And I did not regret that A'avi was mine. Ours if they would but grant me the boon.

 

"You are their patron. A patron chooses. And adjunct accepts..." A'avi pointed out the custom of the ffey. A small, yet incredibly vast difference withthe custom of the goblinfolk. His voice trailing off under the combined weight of glares from all of my goblins. In the ffey court he would be right. But he, we, were not in that court.

 

"Why should they have any say at all?" He murmured in his confusion. His eyes widened, enormous in his whitened face. "Do they have a say in what you do with me now? I have betrayed you, it is for you to decide what to do with me not them. Right? My punishment will not come from them, right? Please tell me that is true." The thought of my goblins seemed to alarm him, that he might be at the mercy of goblins, and mine in particular. His jaw clenched shut on his pleading. He watched them all warily.

 

"They are goblin, not ffey. By goblin law I am still underage as I am still virgin. I gained Thae because Kohl brought him to me. Not because I chose him myself." I heard the hiss, but was too tired to turn and meet Thae's accusing eyes. I was not rejecting him, I was merely stating facts. "Why are you confessing to wrongdoing like this? As if you have no care about what happens to you if my goblins take offense? I don't understand." I shook my head. He had not heard me, or not processed the information. I could see how the situation we now found ourselves in might slow the thought process, it was certainly fuddling mine. "They are my guardians and have the right to review any decisions I make."

 

"Will you..." A'avi swallowed, tried again, "..will you turn me aside? Will they kill me? I mean if they decide, will you let them kill me?" A'avi asked. This man who I had just given the covenant of my own blood. Did I imagine the hopeful note in his tone? I pursed my lips and tried to figure this all out. What was he angling for? Death? Why would he want to die?

 

He gazed at me as I turned fully towards him, having to look into his eyes. " Can they order you to do that? Will you do it?"

 

"No." I told him, frowning. I couldn't see.... "No, we have shared blood, you and I. You belong to me, completely and utterly. I won't kill you and neither will they. Do you want me to let you go?" I asked curiously. Did he now regret our pairing? His instant flash of fear was even more puzzling. "Were you forced into the offering of yourself? Did your king compel you against your will?" I asked.

 

A'avi pursed his beautiful lips and I held my breath. Then he shook his head decisively. Negatively.

 

I turned back to Kohl, who towered over me. I walked to him and knelt in front of him, at his feet. I reached out and touched his ankles with my hands, cupping them in my palms, leaned in against his legs. His warm skin shot a bolt of energy through me. He answered the first of my heart-felt prayers when he did not pull away.

 

"I offer apology and beg for forgiveness. I have done wrong, but my intention was to do good." I touched my forehead to his knees. His scent filled me, like a cup to overflowing. My heart rate picked up, though I tried hard to will it not to. Please I begged silently, not now! I needed to think with an unclouded mind!

 

"Were you so caught up by his beauty that you forgot the rest of us who have served you already for five years?" Kohl growled at me. "And do you think forgiveness will be yours so easily? Clearly your cousin has his own agenda, and this man is part of it. Now you want us to accept him, welcome the viper into our nest? Without asking what kind of venom the snake possesses?" Kohl snorted his disgust. I felt shame wash over me.

 

"I gave no weight to his face," I denied, hotly wishing it were entirely true. "I heard he was Keeper. I decided on that basis. Without the Keepers I would be already long dead, many years past, Ko. You would be bound to another, free of me, never having known I lived at all."

 

He became very still, then slowly reached down to me. I held the hand he lowered to me, held it tight and laid my cheek on it's scar crossed back. I held his hand fiercely tight. I pressed one kiss to the velvet goblin skin, tasting the sweet earthiness of his sweat. Grateful he had known how much I needed his touch, even if he was angry with me.

 

"I would have known you lived," he said, "for I stood with the witnesses when you were born into the soil." It was said so quiet I thought I misheard, and then before I could ask, he barreled on.

 

"Hard to believe such a pretty face had no effect on you. So, you have no intention of laying with him? No intention of taking him to your bed? If he does not attract you at all it will be no hardship, will it? Will you forgive him if his true mission proves to be to slay us all?" Kohl's voice was controlled and steady. "You had four adjuncts, all goblin who have served you well, protected you to the threshold of your Change, why take another? So quickly take him that you could not stop and ask us our opinion? And don't deny to me that you lust for him. I can smell your lie. Will you give him that which has been promised to me?" His tail brushed my hair back from one cheek, while his words cut me.

 

"No. No. I do not offer him that which is yours. He will be my adjunct, he is my adjunct! But you are first. You are my prime. Always. I can not give my word that he will never come to my bed and know my body." I moaned, because the idea of not touching the ffey man was painful in a way it should not have been. I was confused, I lifted my head, "But you will be there first, before all others. Ko, why...?"

 

"And yet you still want me to believe his beauty had no effect. Your cousin, Smamacasca, chose him because of his beauty. I can feel how much you want him. Just as I felt the woman trying to be-spell and seduce you. When she failed, Jenus, ffey king, only had to unmask this beautiful face to have you in his grasp. I taste your desire in the air, you-who-are-no-longer-a-child, your body cries for him. It is driving Thae mad." Kohl's voice was low and pierced into the recesses of my brain. "You declined the woman. Did she not raise your desires? She, too, was beautiful, if you like ffey. And she wanted you passionately. She was fertile and would have lain with you. You could have had children of her body.... Why did you not bring her into our bond?"

 

Children?! I stared up at him gaping. He grinned at me, a twist of his mouth.

 

"You did not smell her?" He asked me, incredulous. "It is not you who are infertile, it is we, your goblins who have given it up to bond with you. You can father no children with goblins but there has been no edict against it with a ffey. No goblin can give you children, but a ffey, who has not taken an oath, who has not had the priest's hand on her, she could still give you children."

 

I fell back, landing on my bottom. I hadn't understood. She could have given me a child. A child. I ached, my chest raw as if scraped out hollow with a sharp edged spoon. She could have given me...and I had sent her out in my anger at her manipulations of me. In anger that she dangled her fertility in front of me. But she had not been taunting me. She had been offering me the greatest gift I had ever been offered. And I, had thrown it back in her face.

 

"Oh, Smamacasca." Fais said, shaking his head. Unsaid was the knowledge we all had, that I had not taken any of them into my bed as an adult. A potent reminder that I was still a virgin. I curled onto my side. I had lost my chance to have a child.


	13. Part 13

  
Author's notes: Paying for it.  


* * *

"Stop it." Beyan lifted his head. His brow furrowed. "Stop it. I can't do this. Why? Why would you do it this way, Sam? When have we ever been unreasonable? Could you not have asked, taken a moment to see how we felt?" I saw the pain on his face, the same pain that was making Kohl speak so harshly. It was my fault. And I didn't know why I had done it, or how to fix it.

 

"You hate the ffey, all of you do, Bey. What did you expect me to do? I knew you would refuse. I wanted to comfort him..." I faced Beyan when I answered, felt Kohl's fingers sliding back into mine as I rose from the floor. He squeezed my fingers once, then pulled away, his tail sliding away from my skin. I didn't try to keep the hold, I let him go, leaning against his legs, turning so the back of my head pressed to Kohl's thigh. I could see Beyan well, and his eyes met mine.

 

"I like them well enough to fuck them," Kohl said into the silence that greeted my accusation. I lifted my face to stare up at him. He was looking directly at me, our gazes meeting upside down, his face blanked of all expression, tears filled my eyes, sudden, unstoppable.

 

"You have..fucked...ffey while you have been my adjunct? You have taken a ffey lover?" I asked, barely able to get the words out. He looked away over my head.

 

"Did you?" I waited for the answer my chest growing tight. I had been fourteen when we joined, I was soon to be nineteen. There had been many years of waiting between then and now. Perhaps too many for any to wait.

 

"No, I have not taken a ffey lover." Kohl said at last, and the ache in my heart started to ease. But not all of it and not the guilt. He had taken lovers, just not ffey. "None of us would take one. We have stayed with our own kind, we have been discreet. That is my point, Sam, there are rules. The rules say I can take this one if I desire. Or the woman if you had chosen her."

 

Beyan shook his head then. "Ko, shut up! There is no point in hurting him like this. What sex we had was not with lovers at all. We took no one who could be called a lover. We are able to reason and to think, and follow the rules. We did not seek to hurt you, or to bring humiliation to you. But you have done this. I am able to guess why this one means so much. You saw a chance to have a highborn ffey beside you, to own one of those who made your young life hell, and you were unable to resist. The beautiful face was only a bonus. Well, I will not be a party to your revenge. The bond of patron and adjunct is sacred."

 

"You took others to your bed, Beyan? Why do you not want me to take one of my own, then?" I hissed out angrily, then almost immediately I wanted to take the words back, but it was not possible. They could not be unsaid. I looked at Beyan, my beautiful golden one, afraid to look past him and to the others. I had to try to fix what I had done, yet each time I spoke I only added more pain.

 

"I..." I bit my lip. "It was not for that... Nor for his beauty..." I hoped it was not, at least not completely. But if it wasn't...then why? If I couldn't figure out why, how could I figure out why it was not? Why did I want this ffey, A'avi, at all? Simple lust? A high price to pay for it, if so. Something worse? Did I want him to die? "Ko, you can't.... I can't...." I stopped. Kohl glared down at me, but Beyan answered.

 

"Was it not desire? Fine." Beyan smiled sadly, as if I had disappointed him. "By all means, if you mean to go through with it, finish the dance. I will even go first among your adjuncts and offer this newest....brother....my sweet blood. If he will take it."

 

Beyan lay back on his back baring his neck, untying his cloth, exposing his body with a stranger in the room. He lifted his knee, displaying himself. I pushed away from Kohl's legs hard, and he made no move to stop me, i came to my feet in a rush, poised, trembling, fighting for control that was tenuous at best.

 

I shivered, staring at Beyan, watching his tight abs flexing with each breath he drew. Pictured A'avi on top of him, mouth pressed to Beyan's throat, drinking. Beyan's arms open, embracing. In my mind I actually saw it, heard the sounds of sucking, felt Beyan's tremors as he gave up his life fluid, saw his hands splayed wide on another back, not my own, holding A'avi to him.

 

I saw red.

 

I was snarling before I realized I was losing it. The room exploded. I was heading for Beyan who was absolutely still, waiting for me. My claws were slashing for him, then Fais intercepted me, faster and far, far stronger, he swept me up in the air, kicking and howling. Thae was up out of the soil like a rocket, springing for me, fingers hooked. A'avi, upon seeing Thae jump in the direction of the table and not knowing he was going for me, went under it and stayed. A smart man, I thought even through the haze of fury and frustration.

 

Beyan snagged the leaping Thae by his ankles and held on as he was dragged across the floor. Thae caught himself on his hands before he slammed into the ground face first. Distantly I was thinking, too fast, the boy is way too fast.

 

Kohl stepped over, preternaturally calm, and took me from Fais, held me. Fais joined Bey trying to calm the struggling Thae who they turned so he couldn't see me, as he writhed within their hold.

 

I was hyperventilating, struggling, too. Kohl wrapped me tight in his unyielding arms. He shook me.

 

"Stupid. You are not only ffey. You are goblin. We are your mates for all we have not yet lay with you as lovers. How else could you react when you think of another touching one of us? There is good reason behind the traditions that guide bond between adjunct and patron, Sam. There is a reason why we swear on our oaths not to seek serious liaisons outside of our bond. We can slake out thirst with others, but never take one to our heart. There is only you, foolish man, only you that we will swear life bond to. There was good reason you should have asked us to approve bond to this one before you took him."

 

His voice was loving, soothing. I loved him, I loved Beyan, and I loved Fais. I hoped some day to love Thae. Now what was I going to do about my new ffey adjunct? The one who made me burn.

 

You mean I am the one who can not share." I whispered, quieting. Thae didn't count in this conversation, he was too young for sex. It made a sickening kind of sense. I closed my eyes for a moment.

 

"I never asked that you be celibate." I said, weakly defiant. It was a feeble protest, because all of them knew the jealousy I felt when others looked on them with covetous eyes. It was unspoken, but never the less real, I had denied them sex outside our bond as much as I could do. I had failed to set them free to seek relief, though they had found it anyway, not speaking of it to me until now.

 

"I know you didn't. But you should also know and admit that not all rules are spoken ones. We can feel your intent, your wish without you telling us in so many words, at least on this one subject, Sam. We have sought out others, yes. But we have been discreet, little one, we would not have you no one who has shared our beds will ever come back to you, no one will speak their names in connection with us. The court will not ring with mirth making light of you, nor speak of how you can not hold your adjuncts. We have guarded your reputation. You didn't release us, but you didn't forbid us. The time was not right for you, your change was not on you. It comes now, soon, and it only makes things harder. But we will get you through it, we are yours. I never realized that no one had told you that it is you who can not share us openly. The patron wishes to gather others, to take many lovers, but does not wish to share his adjuncts." Kohl said as I clung to him, fingers digging into his flesh.

 

"Not until today, not until this moment, did I know that you didn't realize. There was always the possibility that you would behave more as a ffey in this, that you would release us without care to go an seek lovers as they do. But tonight, I think is the final answer on that. You are as much goblin as we. You will not share us out." He turned his face to the rest of the room, his hand cupping the back of my head. "Get up, Beyan. Thae, Fais, bring the ffey here. Gently. We will see this thing done. As our patron wishes."

 

Fais scowled at him, but obeyed, his fangs automatically extending just a bit one he touched the ffey man. He pulled A'avi out from under the table like you would a small, reluctant pet, A'vi stiff, resisting, but not actively fighting. A'avi was paying close attention to those gleaming fangs displayed. But he had little to worry over, Fais was obeying his first, he wasn't going to harm A'avi.

 

"I wasn't planning on hurting him. You smell funny, ffey." Fais complained the last to A'avi, as they approached the rest of us. He held him at arm's length, nose wrinkled slightly.

 

"He is ffey." Beyan remarked, climbing to his feet, tying his wrap loosely around his hips, leaving his strong chest bare, the bronze double lines of his nipples gleaming like new coins. His rippled abs drawing my eye. Thae was held tight under one of Beyan's long arms, Beyan's hand wrapped hard around both of the youngster's wrists. The youth's eye were downcast, avoiding mine. His skin was flushed, a darker shade of sunset and peach, overwhelming the pale yellow tints in his skin.

 

I had a sudden flash of insight. Thae was my adjunct sure...but he was also nearing his change at the same time as I. Thus our conflict, we were rivals for the attentionof the adults goblins around us. I would come into my change first, but in so doing I would bring him to his sooner than he was ready. Ghods. I hung my head. It was not fair, nor right, yet what could be done? Nothing. Nothing at all. It would happen. Beyan's voice brought me back to the immediate problem.

 

"Of course he smells funny. They like scents and perfumes." Beyan said, irritably. The whole front of his body was covered in dirt from catching Thae as the boy-man had exploded up out of the earth he'd been partly buried in. He was lovely standing there, holding Thae. My rival in all but admission out loud.

 

"Put me down." I told Kohl, keeping my voice even, while anxiety began to build in me. They were planning something... Kohl shook his head, shifting me in his hold, unwinding his hip cloth.

 

"I just want to go to Beyan. I don't want to hurt him." I explained, but I was distracted watching Kohl's body as it was revealed. It had been that way lately, me focused on him, every action, every part of him, peeking when I thought it wasn't noticed. My throat was suddenly dry, he was left wearing only his brief loincloth. My heart was hammering again. My hands fisted, as I fought not to stroke him, run my hands over him, under the edge of his last bit of clothing.

 

What was going to happen now? What ever it was...I couldn't stop it.


	14. Part 14

  
Author's notes: The choice.  


* * *

"No." Kohl said. "On the contrary, I am going to hold you even tighter while we do this. Beyan has something else to do before you go to him. I don't trust you to let him do it. I can't afford to. You don't yet know how to control these feeling the ffey has woken in you." And he proceeded to tie my wrists and ankles with his hip cloth. I was so surprised I let him tie me without a fight. Kohl did not play practical jokes. He believed I had to be tied, or he would not have done it.

 

"It is necessary for us to join with him. Your rashness gives us no choice. If we don't bind to him, and he touches on of us in a way that sets you...or Thae off, one of you will kill him before you know what you are doing." Kohl told me. I looked around and up into Fais' solemn face. Pressure built inside my chest, I dropped my gaze, struggling to breathe, barely hearing A'avi's rushed words.

 

"I won't touch you." The ffey said out loud, tone insistent and positive. "I won't touch any of you. I will swear to it!" He had his hands up and out, as if to ward everyone off. To shield himself. Kohl ignored him. Fais shook A'avi once, not as hard as I thought he might, and hissed into the smaller man's ear. The ffey man was very quiet after that.

 

Kohl looked down at me as I lay secure, trussed like a turkey, in his arms. "Don't think you are forgiven. I am very angry you have made it necessary to feed from a ffey, and to feed one in turn with good goblin blood. I would prefer to kill him myself. But I won't. Not until he tells me what the ffey king told him not to tell us." He paused to let my brain digest the threat. Then he relented at my wide eyes.

 

"No, Sam, I won't kill him." He said when I opened my mouth, fear tearing through me sharp as a knife.

 

They all stood in a rough circle, just stood, not doing anything, they exchanged glances, back and forth. No one moved. Kohl held me cradled in his arms, Fais kept a grip on A'avi's arm and Beyan simply stood holding a sulking Thae who kept his eyes downcast, tense, waiting. Time ticked on. And on. At last I cleared my throat.

 

"Uhm. If nothing is going to happen...can you please untie me, Kohl?" I asked. He gazed at me. Then around at each of the others. They all met his eyes, even Thae.

 

"Uh, guys?" I said at last when we all still stood unmoving minute later. It was pretty clear they weren't going to give up this ill-thought out idea, whatever it was. "What about Thae?" He could have reached me but for Beyan's quick move, and that meant he could reach A'avi, too. Reach him and with a single swat, kill him. An end to the problem sure, but I couldn't bear to think of it.

 

Kohl held out one of his arms. "Come here." He ordered Thae. The youth disengaged himself from Beyan and went to Kohl, his feet dragging reluctantly over the floor. A minute later Thae was trussed up as tightly as I. The spelled cords would hold him, despite the uncanny strength that inhabited his long, gangly limbs. Both of us, tied, were watched over by Kohl, he tucked us under his massive arms, sitting back at his ease.

 

Beyan shook himself, straightening his shoulders as if preparing for some dangerous and onerous task. "I offered to be first earlier, I might as well be in truth. Come here, ffey."

 

A'avi held back and Fais pushed him forward. There was anger there, tension of the goblin vs. ffey variety. But for a goblin warrior, Fais was being gentle, probably partly because of A'avi's youth, and the unfortunate reality that I had forced on all of them. He, A'avi, was going to be one of us. The ffey held up both hands placatingly, He bumped into the front of Beyan's body. Beyan steadied him. A'avi shuddered, trying to take a step back, trying to twist free and distance himself even a little.

 

"Wait. Explain to me, how is this going to work? Now that you have said it is different from ffey bonding, I want to know just how it is going to be different. Please." The former Keeper pleaded. Kohl nodded, busy adjusting me under one arm and Thae under the other.

 

"A reasonable request. Then let us all sit and tell our new pet how it is going to be." Kohl said, showing his teeth in a smile that wasn't one. But the ffey was not intimidated, his eyes were huge, but he stood his ground. Kohl fought back a true smile when the smaller man bristled.

 

"I am not a pet." A'avi growled low in his throat. His cloak was hanging askew, I saw a long robe beneath it, hem brushing the floor, crookedly now after his tussle. A double row of tiny buttons ran down the front of the robe from chin to hip.

 

"You are the last of us and to the least of us. I have been led to understand in ffey all adjuncts have the same status and rank, based only on the rank of their patron. Among our kind there is no such simplicity. There is a hierarchy of dominance to follow. I am first adjunct. Next to me is Fais, then Beyan, and then Thae. He is the youngest of us. Now there is you. You are smaller, and less physically powerful. I presume you are younger than Bey. Yes?" A'avi looked aside for a second, jaw flexing. Kohl grinned, toothily. "You certainly feel younger to me. So our new hierarchy is me, Fais, Beyan, you, and then Thae, as he is not yet adult. Though closer to it than I might have thought." Kohl told him. I felt more than saw Thae stiffen, outrage pouring off of him in waves.

 

"There are rules, purely goblin rules by which we have chosen to live here. In the ffey bond only the patron binds with the adjunct. Among goblins, adjuncts bond to the patron and to each other. There are ties between all of us. Ties once forged that can not be broken." Kohl continued. "We are not forbidden to be lovers. I understand the ffey frown on such things and prefer to pretend they do not happen. We do not. The ffey often release their adjuncts to outside relationships. Goblins prefer not. You belong to the bond, to the patron. Seeking sex outside can be done, but only with great care and utmost discretion. I would not advise it, however, now that Smamcasca nears his time. If you do not find what you need within our bond, then you should do without."

 

"I was bonded once before. My patron was killed." A'avi offered, a little defensively. As if to him it made a difference. I wondered how young he had been, how he could have been taken as an adjunct, a protector at all. Then I remembered Thae and flushed. I could be accused of the same thing, taking a child into bond. Though I knew nothing forbidden had occurred.

 

Kohl smiled nastily watching the ideas flit across my face. Showing more sharp teeth than strictly necessary. He shrugged, the message was clear. Such things as ffey bonding did not matter to goblins. All goblins knew the ffey to be perverse. 

 

"That does not buy you more rank among us, ffey." Fais added out loud. Flexing his arms and fists while he watched A'avi. His biceps were like small boulders under his skin, corded, hard, mesmerizing.

 

"Stop calling me ffey. I have a name. I am Lord A'dannan A'avi." A'avi raised his chin, his voice like stone grating over stone. And he did look regal, beautiful. I was open mouthed looking at him. My heart thudded. And I couldn't stop it. Blood rushed to fill the very sensitive parts of my body, leaving nothing for my brain. I snapped my eyes shut. I had to listen, I had to concentrate. I had to breathe, breathe, not pant....

 

Kohl drew in a long breath. Thae shifted, grunting, impatient.

 

"And I am Kohl, little ffey. That is Fais and that is Beyan. This is Thae and Sam, as you know. We are all lords twice over, so that kind of rank has no import. Once to qualify as adjuncts, second by virtue of our bond to a royal. Because of our bond to him, we are now goblin royalty. So titles are nothing." Kohl sniffed his disdain.

 

"I am still entitled to my own name whether or not you want to add lord to it or not." A'avi insisted hotly, teeth clenched, while Beyan, growing bored with the talk lifted him and took him deeper into the House of Records. Kohl stood and all of us trailed after Beyan and A'avi.

 

We gathered around the crest rug that decorated the floor of our sleeping room. The crest was that of the royal house of goblins. Woven by the expert hand of Kohl's mother, she who wouldn't speak to me, or even let her eyes rest on me when we met in case the curse of my life would pass to her.

 

A'avi frowned at the rug, but allowed himself to be coaxed to kneeling, then sitting cross legged on the thick silk nap. Beyan kept close to him, between the ffey and the exit, if things came to that. To the ffey man trying to flee this. Flee us.

 

"What will happen if I recant? If I let him go?" I asked Kohl, babbling in my haste to speak before anything else happened. I did not want to do this, to have Beyan touch him. I did not want to see it. I was desperate to stop it. And when I had stopped it, I could find him again, go to the ffey court to see Jenus and find A'avi when I was on my own...

 

"I can send him away, not see him, not have him here again. I will tell Jenus it is too soon, things are too unstable now. I can't take another adjunct. I will tell him I must wait until my time has come and gone...." I rushed on as Beyan lifted his hand, reaching out to touch the silk of the ffey's hair.

 

"No! Bey! Don't touch him. Please, don't." My voice rose to a screech of panic.

 

Kohl took my jaw in his hand, turned my head so had to look at him. I fought him, but he would not let me win. I met Thae's big, resentful eyes looking at me under Kohl's chin, his skin, nearly as pale yellow as aged ivory, his eyes like pits in his too pale face. He blamed me for this. Kohl murmured to me, his lips against my ear.

 

"You will find yourself stalking him, even if you do mange to let him out of here without commanding him to return. You have marked him as your own. That is what he is. It is too late to change anything, unless you agree to kill him, then you will be free of him. We will all be free of him. Is that what you wish to do?" Kohl asked me while I rested against his chest. I felt the rumbling of the words against my cheek. the curl the air that formed the words floating across my skin.

 

Fais watched me very closely, making sure I witnessed his hand moving to the sword sheathed at his hip. Ready to carry out the order of execution if I agreed.

 

I drew in my breath to speak.


	15. Part 15

  
Author's notes: The choice.  


* * *

Beyan reached out, his huge hand shining palely.

 

"Shit," I couldn't take it.

 

"No. Don't you touch him! Fais! Don't you...dare. Don't. I don't want any of you to touch him. Let me go!" I writhed, tugging at the fabric corded around my wrists, testing them, biting at them, getting no where. I should have known Kohl knew how to tie a knot.

 

I twisted back towards where A'avi and Beyan sat, Beyan's hand back in his lap. Thae made a sound, kicking out. And I whipped my head around to see him. His eyes were huge, fixed on something. I followed his gaze. I gasped. Unable to credit what I saw. One slender, gold-hued foot peeking out from beneath the ffey's clothing.

 

"You are barefoot!" I half yelled at the ffey. Kohl started violently at my yell almost directly in his ear, but he didn't lose his grip on me, or on Thae, who he had trapped under one leg. Thae squirmed, jerking hard, not succeeding in getting free any more than I.

 

Ffey never went barefoot. Never unless they were in bed, in the bath, or had a very pressing reason. Like religion. The ffey were far too modest, too refined. A'avi's face flushed and he slid the one visible foot under the edge on his robes and covering cloak, clutching at it through the layers of cloth. His eyes moved from face to face, nervous. He swallowed.

 

Fais strode over, falling to a crouch and lifted the robe, moving it aside so both feet and ankles were visible. Both bare. It was not a case of the ffey having lost a shoe...he was intentionally unshod.

 

"You are a priest? A priest of the earth?" Fais asked. The ffey did not call the great ghod DanFii. But as with the goblin faithful, he was an earth ghod to the ffey. Fais himself was a priest of DanFii. His voice, his tone was finally interested. His deep grey eyes fractionally less hostile, almost warm.

 

The ffey man squirmed, plainly warring with himself. He shook his head sharply, once. Denying that he was a priest. I frowned. Why else...? Then he mumbled his reply.

 

"Blessed Earth, I can not lie to you who are taking me into your bond. Not even one little falsehood. I owe you the truth." He caught his lower lip in his teeth and scraped them down it hard. I thought it was a nervous tic, a prelude to the confession he hinted at. But it was not. It was the confession itself.

 

When I saw what was revealed I knew who he was. He said it out loud as the name was ringing in my brain.

 

"I am Dannan. I am a ghod. An earth deity. But very minor, I have few followers in the traditional sense. No one would recognized me as the one they call on for blessings. For fertility." He was truly crimson cheeked now. A ffey ghod, an earth ghod, a ghod of sex. Curled up with miserable, slumped shoulder's on my rug.

 

"DanFii!" Fais recoiled. It was one thing to be a priest, another entirely to be a ghod. Beyan was staring at his own hand holding the other's wrist through the sleeve of the enveloping robes. He kept hold of the smaller man, but he leaned away slightly. A ffey ghod was worse than a plain old ffey noble.

 

"You...are...not...sterile." Beyan whispered, barely loud enough for us all to hear. And it felt as if I had been thrown into ice water. A ghod could not be magicked to be sterile. Most certainly not an earth diety, a deity who's very power was fertility and life. The ffey had no magic strong enough to sterilize him. Trust Beyan to say it out loud. To make sure all of us grasped the fact.

 

"No of course not. Why do you think Jenus chose me? He would not send me if I could not give him children." A'avi looked offended, outraged at the very thought. "If I was sterile I would not be a fit partner." Then comprehension dawned on his gorgeous face and he looked around at all of us. Finally his eyes rested on me. "You are not fertile? None of you?"

 

"I am." I whispered, the ache back stronger than ever. "What need since no woman will lay with me because I am so hideously cursed?" I returned bitterly. I had been waiting for the call to the goblin court now that I was nearing my time. They had to wait until I was adult. No one wanted to risk the ghod's towering ire by sterilizing a child.

 

"They are all sterile. It was part of the contract, a stipulation added by the queen and the nobility. To ward off the wrath of the ghods." I told him. And the blame was mine for wanting them.

 

"Are you able...?" He asked, his voice holding horror. His eyes flew from goblin to goblin, trying to assess whether they still had the necessary equipment, the parts to do the deed. Beyan's grip tightened and A'avi let out a gasp of pain. His fingers pried at the grip and Beyan relented instantly. No one answered his original question. He posed another.

 

"Even the boy?" He asked the full horror of the idea on his countenance.

 

"No, he is too young. After his change..." I whispered hanging my head. I tried not to think about it, about what my pairing with Thae meant for him, growing up, never having a child. Because he was with me.

 

I entertained refusing the queen's edict every night in my dreams, I dreamt of saving him in my dreams. Of someday holding a child he brought to me, a child fathered for me. This one thing I had wondered, why did Kohl bring him to me, only to have him go through this? I stared at Kohl, at his delightful green/grey visage, and did not miss the gleam in his grey eyes. He cut me off before the question left my lips.

 

"So...the ffey king sends one such as you into our bond. The woman so unsuitable Smamacasca was virtually assured to choose you if he took anyone. Jenus planned this. To sow discord among the ffey. Your cousin wants you to flee the courts, and soon. Or someone will plan another killing and come for you." Kohl smirked. "He bribes you with the vision of having a ghodling's son someday."

 

Kohl's words in contrast to his expression were soft. His jaw was hard as he ground his teeth. A'avi raised his chin defiantly. I was stunned...a child. A child. I might someday have a ghodling's child in my arms, a child who would bear my name. Was that what Jenus wanted? What he had intended?

 

"He told me no such thing." A'avi protested. "King Jenus spoke of Sam as an asset to the court, one he could not afford to lose. But that I must never mention...." He faltered to a stop, his face red yet again. And it was clear. Jenus had not wanted me to know of A'avi's potential, nor to think of the consequences of the court's knowing I had a fertile mate.

 

"No." A'avi shook his head. "He said he couldn't afford to lose Sam entirely to the influence of the goblins. That he must be reminded that he was ffey also." Now he looked worried. "I will not insist on laying with others outside of the bond." His promise made my gut churn and brought out a growl from every goblin throat in the room. He looked around wildly. Doubt and fear brimmed in his eyes.

 

"You would deny the root of your power to your bond?" Kohl asked in a low quiet, deadly rumble. "All earth deities pass power through sex and rites of fertility. Yet you say you won't offer a part of that. Will you also refuse to lay with him, and with us? Your power belongs to us, to him. He is your patron. We are your fellow adjuncts. I will not live by the weakling ffey code and allow you to make me into an muling ffey. You are not permitted to withhold anything, any power back from your bond. Nothing. Another goblin rule." His smile was predatory, not a threat this time, but the promise of retribution of death and eating flesh. His long battle fangs flashed.

 

"But you said...you sounded so angry..." A'avi shook his head, looked away, his shoulders slumping. "I can not win this. That is becoming clear. Just tell me what you want from me. I'll do whatever you tell me to do. What are you looking to gain here? My power? I give that freely. It has never brought me anything I wanted. It has been a source of nothing but pain. If you can, take it from me and I will be well quit of it. It isn't the kind of power that helps you fight. Or win. That is the kind of power that means something. That people want."

 

"It is everything," I muttered my own pain a knife through my chest. "It is life." He bit his lip.

 

"You wouldn't think so if you were the one who'd had it." He told me, eyes filling with hot tears. They brimmed, but didn't spill.

 

He retained his dignity, sitting as tall as possible next to the giant ivory, brown and gold goblin. He looked so young, so lost, frail, covered heck to ankles, only his hands, face and feet bare to our gazes. The stiff collar of his robe was so high it brushed the lobes of his ears. My eyes were riveted on the small dot of red in the exact center of his lower lip. It was the diameter of a pea. The ghod mark.

 

Again the long silence. I wasn't about to say more and give in to my own tears. A longing so strong that it was like a sword thrust into my belly had gripped me. I clamped my teeth together hard to hold it in. I didn't want any of my thoughts escaping into babbling words.

 

If I took him to me. If I let him lay with a fertile woman, I would be a father. I could have a child. It was no longer an impossibility. I had entertained so many fantasies of hiding Thae, of keeping him from the magic that would steal yet another dream from me...But that was in the future. Now...now I had one here who was adult already. No waiting, no scheming, no planning. He could never be made infertile. And the goblin queen could never take him from me. Why had Jenus given me this incredible gift? Surely it wasn't an accident? He was too savvy for it to be.

 

At last someone spoke. It was Kohl. And he spoke to me, his voice completely free of anger, of rage, of any emotion at all. But the words were plenty, they needed no tone to add to their cutting power.

 

"Don't you ever put me in this position again." Kohl said to me, the weight of his displeasure a mountain on my chest. I shuddered at the hollow emptiness behind it. Then he faced A'avi.

 

"Very well, A'avi. Tell us what else king Jenus of the ffey wanted to remain secret. The part he wanted us not to think of."

 

The ffey spoke eagerly, as if it were a relief not to keep it to himself.

 

Oh, Jenus, I thought, how poorly you chose this one to keep any secrets....


End file.
